
Class PSl7 6 ^ 



l^^l 



WO^L T>LY W^rS 



WORLDLY 

WAYS 

a" 

BYWAYS 



BY 

Eliot Gregory 

{''An Idler'') 




NEW YORK 

Charles Scribners Sons 

MDCCCXCIX 






Copyright^ 1898, by 
Charles Scribner^ Sons 



By Exchange 
Army and Navy Club 

JANUARY 16 1934 






lO 



i' 



To 
jE. Z/. Godkin^ Rsq^"'- 



Sir: 

I WISH your name to appear on the 
first page of a volume, the composition 
of which was suggested by you. 

Gratitude is said to be "the hope of 
favors to come ; " these lines are written 
to prove that it may be the appreciation 
of kindnesses received. 

Heartily yours 

Eliot Gregory 



A Table of Contents 



To the RE ^DE^ ix 

No, I. Charm i 

2. T'he 3\J^oth and the Star 9 

3. Contrasted Travelling 15 

4. The Outer and the Inner Woman 2 1 

5. On Some Q-ilded ^Misalliances 29 

6. The Complacency of <3VLediocrity 36 

7. T'/^d' discontent of Talent 42 
%, Slouch 49 
9. Social Suggestion 57 

0. Bohemia 65 

1 . Social Exiles 7 1 

2. ''Seven <tAges''' of Furniture 78 

3. O^^r E///6' and Public Life 86 

4. T'/^d' Small Summer Hotel 92 

5. e^ F^^/fd' aS^^jt/^ 99 

6. ^ Holy Land 107 

7. '^yalty at ^lay 113 

8. (i^ '^ck oAhead 1 2 1 

9. The Grand Prix 127 
20." The Treadmill " 133 
21." L/yJd' 3V[aster Like 3ian " 1 40 
22. e^i^ English Invasion of the 

Riviera 1 47 
[ vii ] 



c/f r^BLE OF CONTENTS 

No. 23. a^ Common Weakness 155 

24. Changing Paris 162 

25. Contentment 169 

26. 7^/6^ Climber 175 

27. Ti^d* Z/^x/ ^ /^f T>andies 181 

28. e/f Sutton on the Wing 1 87 
2(), Husks 196 

30. T'/6d' Faubourg St. Germain 205 

3 1 . ^Mens 3Vlanners 2 1 3 

32. (iAn Ideal Hostess 219 

33. I'he Introducer 225 

34. (L^ ^estion and an aAnswer 231 

35. Living on Tour Friends 237 

36. American Society in Italy 244 

37. Ti^d* Newport of the Vast 252 
3 8 . e^ Conquest of Fur ope 260 

39. e/f 5^^^:^ of Slaves 267 

40. Introspection 276 



[ viii ] 



''^^^sc^'^'^l^^'^^^^'^^^ 



7l? the "Reader 



THERE existed formerly^ in diplomatic 
circles^ a curious custom^ since fallen 
into disuse^ entitled the Pele Mele^ 
contrived doubtless by some distraSled Master 
of Ceremonies to quell the endless jealousies and 
quarrels for precedence between courtiers and 
diplomatists of contending pretensions. Under 
this rule no rank was recognized^ each person 
being allowed at banquet^ f^t^-i or other public 
ceremony only such place as he had been ingen- 
ious or fortunate enough to obtain » 

Any one wishing to form an idea of the con- 
fusion that ensued^ of the intrigues and expedi- 
ents resorted to^ not only in procuring prominent 
places^ but also in ensuring the integrity of the 
Pele Mele^ should glance over the amusing 
memoirs of M. de Segur. 

The aspiring nobles and ambassadors^ har- 
assed by this constant preoccupation^ had little 
time or inclination left for any serious pursuit^ 
since^ to take a momenfs repose or an hours 
breathing space was to risk falling behind in 
the endless and aimless race. Strange as it may 

[ ix ] 



rO THE RE^DET^ 



appear^ the knowledge that they owed place and 
preferment more to chance or intrigue than to 
any personal merit or inherited rights instead of 
lessening the value of the prizes for which all 
were strivings seemed only to enhance them in 
the eyes of the competitors. 

Success was the unique standard by which 
they gauged their fellows. Those who succeeded 
revelled in the adulation of tlieir friends^ hut 
when any one failed^ the fickle crowd passed him 
by to bow at more fortunate feet. 

No better pi5lure could be found of the 
^'' world'' of to-day^ a perpetual Pele Mele^ 
where such advantages only are conceded as we 
have been sufi^ciently enterprising to obtain^ and 
are strong or clever enough to keep — a constant 
competition^ a daily steeplechase^ favorable to 
daring spirits and personal initiative but with 
the defeB of keeping frail humanity ever on the 
qui vive. 

Philosophers tell us^ that we should seek hap- 
piness only in the calm of our own minds ^ not 
allowing external conditions or the opinions of 
others to influence our ways. This lofty detach- 
ment from e?tviromnent is achieved by very few. 
Indeed^ the philosophers themselves (who may be 
said to have invented the art of '' posing ''J were 

[ X ] 



TO THE RE^DE%^ 



generally as vain as peacocks^ profoundly pre- 
occupied with the verdidl of their contemporaries 
and their position as regards posterity, 

Man is horn gregarious and remains all his 
life a herding animaL As one keen observer 
has written^ '^^ So great is maris horror of being 
alone that he will seek the society of those he 
neither likes nor respeBs sooner than be left to 
his ownT The laws and conventions that gov- 
ern mens intercourse have^ therefore, formed a 
tempting subject for the writers of all ages. 
Some have labored hoping to reform their gen- 
eration, others have written to offer solutions for 
life's many problems, 

Beaumarchais, whose penetrating wit left few 
subjedls untouched, makes his Figaro put the 
subject aside with " fe me pr esse de rire de tout, 
de peur d'etre oblige d'en pleurer,'' 

The author of this little volume pretends to 
settle no disputes, aims at inaugurating no re- 
forms. He has lightly touched on passing topics 
and jotted down, " to point a moral or adorn a 
tale^^ some of the more obvious foibles and in- 
consistencies of our American ways. If a stray 
bit of philosophy has here and there slipped in 
between the lines, it is mostly of the laughing 
" school^'' and used more in banter than in blame, 

[ xi ] 



TO THE RE^DE^ 



'This much abused " worW is a fairly agree- 
able place if you do not take it seriously. Meet 
it with a friendly face and it will smile gay ly 
back at you^ but do not ask of it what it cannot 
give^ or attribute to its verdidls more importance 
than they deserve. 

Eliot Gregory 



Newport^ November first^ 1 897. 



Worldly Ways ^ Byways 

N^' I 

Charm 



WOMEN endowed by nature with the 
indescribable quality we call "charm" 
(for want of a better word), are the 
supreme development of a perfected race, the 
last word, as it were, of civilization; the flower 
of their kind, crowning centuries of growing re- 
finement and cultivation. Other women may 
unite a thousand brilliant qualities, and attrac- 
tive attributes, may be beautiful as Astarte or 
witty as Madame de Montespan, those endowed 
with the power of charm, have in all ages and 
under every sky, held undisputed rule over the 
hearts of their generation. 

When we look at the portraits of the enchant- 
resses whom history tells us have ruled the world 
by their charm, and swayed the destinies of em- 
pires at their fancy, we are astonished to find that 
they have rarely been beautiful. From Cleopatra 
or Mary of Scotland down to Lola Montez, the 
tell-tale coin or canvas reveals the same marvel- 
lous fa6l. We wonder how these women attained 

[ I ] 



such influence over the men of their day, their 
husbands or lovers. We would do better to look 
around us, or inward, and observe what is pass- 
ing in our own hearts. 

Pause, reader mine, a moment and refled:. 
Who has held the first place in your thoughts, 
filled your soul, and influenced your life? Was 
she the most beautiful of your acquaintances, 
the radiant vision that dazzled your boyish eyes? 
Has she not rather been some gentle, quiet wo- 
man whom you hardly noticed the first time 
your paths crossed, but who gradually grew to 
be a part of your life — to whom you instinc- 
tively turned for consolation in moments of dis- 
couragement, for counsel in your difficulties, and 
whose welcome was the bright moment in your 
day, looked forward to through long hours of 
toil and worry? 

In the hurly-burly of life we lose sight of so 
many things our fathers and mothers clung to, 
and have drifted so far away from their gentle 
customs and simple, home-loving habits, that 
one wonders what impression our society would 
make on a woman of a century ago, could she 
by some spell be dropped into the swing of 
modern days. The good soul would be apt to 
find it rather a far cry from the quiet pleasures 
of her youth, to "a ladies* amateur bicycle race" 
that formed the attraction recently at a summer 
resort. 

That we should have come to think it natural 

[2] 



CH^RM 

and proper for a young wife and mother to pass 
her mornings at golf, lunching at the club-house 
to "save time," returning home only for a hur- 
ried change of toilet to start again on a bicycle 
or for a round of calls, an occupation that will 
leave her just the half-hour necessary to slip 
into a dinner gown, and then for her to pass 
the evening in dancing or at the card-table, shows, 
when one takes the time to think of it, how 
unconsciously we have changed, and (with all 
apologies to the gay hostesses and graceful ath- 
letes of to-day) not for the better. 

It is just in the subtle quality of charm that 
the women of the last ten years have fallen away 
from their elder sisters. They have been car- 
ried along by a love of sport, and by the set of 
fashion's tide, not stopping to ask themselves 
whither they are floating. They do not realize 
all the importance of their a6ls nor the true 
meaning of their metamorphosis. 

The dear creatures should be content, for they 
have at last escaped from the bondage of ages, 
have broken their chains, and vaulted over their 
prison walls. "Lords and masters" have gradu- 
ally become very humble and obedient ser- 
vants, and the "love, honour, and obey" of the 
marriage service might now more logically be 
spoken by the man; on the lips of the women 
of to-day it is but a graceful ^^fa^on de parler^* 
and holds only those who choose to be bound. 

It is not my intention to rail against the short- 

[3 ] 



comings of the day. That ungrateful task I leave 
to sterner moralists, and hopeful souls who 
naively imagine they can stem the current of an 
epoch with the barrier of their eloquence, or 
sweep back an ocean of innovations by their 
logic. I should like, however, to ask my sisters 
one question: Are they quite sure that women 
gain by these changes? Do they imagine, these 
"sporty" young females in short-cut skirts and 
mannish shirts and ties, that it is sedudtive to a 
lover, or a husband to see his idol in a violent 
perspiration, her draggled hair blowing across 
a sunburned face, panting up a long hill in front 
of him on a bicycle, frantic at having lost her 
race? Shade of gentle William! who said 

A woman moved^ is like a fountain troubled^ — 
Muddy ^ ill-seeming^ thick^ bereft of beauty. 
And while it is so^ none so dry or thirsty 
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it. 

Is the modern girl under the impression that 
men will be contented with poor imitations of 
themselves, to share their homes and be the 
mothers of their children? She is throwing away 
the substance for the shadow! 

The moment women step out from the sanc- 
tuary of their homes, the glamour that girlhood 
or maternity has thrown around them cast aside, 
that moment will they cease to rule mankind. 
Women may agitate until they have obtained 
political recognition, but will awake from their 

[4] 



CH^RM 



foolish dream of power, realizing too late what 
they have sacrificed to obtain it, that the price 
has been very heavy, and the fruit of their strug- 
gles bitter on their lips. 

There are few men, I imagine, of my genera- 
tion to whom the words "home" and "mother" 
have not a penetrating charm, who do not look 
back with softened heart and tender thoughts to 
fireside scenes of evening readings and twilight 
talks at a mother's knee, realizing that the best 
in their natures owes its growth to these influ- 
ences. 

I sometimes look about me and wonder what 
the word "mother" will mean later, to modern 
little boys. It will evoke, I fear, a confused re- 
membrance of some centaur-like being, half wo- 
man, half wheel, or as it did to negledled little 
Rawdon Crawley, the vision of a radiant creature 
in gauze and jewels, driving away to endless 
fetes — fetes followed by long mornings, when he 
was told not to makeany noise, or play too loudly, 
"as poor mamma is resting." What other mem- 
ories can the "successful" woman of to-day 
hope to leave in the minds of her children? If 
the child remembers his mother in this way, will 
not the man who has known and perhaps loved 
her, feel the same sensation of empty futility when 
her name is mentioned? 

The woman who proposes a game of cards to 
a youth who comes to pass an hour in her soci- 
ety, can hardly exped: him to carry away a par- 

[s] 



ticularly tender memory of her as he leaves the 
house. The girl who has rowed, ridden, or raced 
at a man's side for days, with the objed of get- 
ting the better of him at some sport or pastime, 
cannot reasonably hope to be connedled in his 
thoughts with ideas more tender or more ele- 
vated than "odds" or "handicaps," with an un- 
dercurrent of pique if his unsexed companion 
has "downed" him successfully. 

What man, unless he be singularly dissolute 
or unfortunate, but turns his steps, when he can, 
towards some dainty parlor where he is sure of 
finding a smiling, soft-voiced woman, whose 
welcome he knows will soothe his irritated nerves 
and restore the even balance of his temper, whose 
charm will work its subtle way into his troubled 
spirit? The wife he loves, or the friend he ad- 
mires and resped;s, will do more for him in one 
such quiet hour when two minds commune, com- 
ing closer to the real man, and moving him to 
braver efforts, and nobler aims, than all the beau- 
ties and "sporty" acquaintances of a lifetime. No 
matter what a man's education or taste is, none 
are insensible to such an atmosphere or to the 
grace and witchery a woman can lend to the sim- 
plest surroundings. She need not be beautiful or 
brilliant to hold him in lifelong allegiance, if she 
but possess this magnetism. 

Madame Recamier was a beautiful, but not a 
brilliant woman, yet she held men her slaves for 
years. To know her was to fall under her charm, 

[6] 



CH^Rm 

and to feel it once was to remain her adorer for 
life. She will go down to history as the type of 
a fascinating woman. Being asked once by an 
acquaintance what spell she worked on mankind 
that enabled her to hold them for ever at her 
feetj she laughingly answered: 

"I have always found two words sufficient. 
When a visitor comes into my salon, I say, 
' Enjin ! ' and when he gets up to go away, I say, 

"What is this wonderful 'charm' he is writ- 
ing about?'* I hear some sprightly maiden in- 
quire as she reads these lines. My dear young 
lady, if you ask the question, you have judged 
yourself and been found wanting. But to satisfy 
you as far as I can, I will try and define it — 
not by telling you what it is ; that is beyond my 
power — but by negatives, the only way in which 
subtle subjects can be approached. 

A woman of charm is never flustered and 
never distraite. She talks little, and rarely of her- 
self, remembering that bores are persons who 
insist on talking about themselves. She does not 
break the thread of a conversation by irrelevant 
questions or confabulate in an undertone with 
the servants. No one of her guests receives more 
of her attention than another and none are neg- 
ledled. She offers to each one who speaks the 
homage of her entire attention. She never makes 
an effort to be brilliant or entertain with her wit. 
She is far too clever for that. Neither does she 

[7] 



WO'E^L'DLr W^rS ^ "BYWAYS 

volunteer information nor converse about her 
troubles or her ailments, nor wander off into de- 
tails about people you do not know. 

She is all things to each man she likes, in the 
best sense of that phrase, appreciating his qual- 
ities, stimulating him to better things. 

for his gayer hours 

She has a voice of gladness and a smile and eloquence of 

beauty ; and she glides 
Into his darker musings with a mild and healing sympathy 

that steals away 
Their sharpness ere he is aware. 



[8] 



N'- 2 

The Moth and the Star 



THE truth of the saying that "it is al- 
ways the unexpedled that happens," 
receives in this country a confirmation 
from an unlooked-for quarter, as does the fad: 
of human nature being always, discouragingly, 
the same in spite of varied surroundings. This 
sounds like a paradox, but is an exceedingly 
simple statement easily proved. 

That the great mass of Americans, drawn as 
they are from such varied sources, should take 
any interest in the comings and goings or social 
doings of a small set of wealthy and fashionable 
people, is certainly an unexpected development. 
That to read of the amusements and home life 
of a clique of people with whom they have little 
in common, whose whole education and point 
of view are different from their own, and whom 
they have rarely seen and never expedt to meet, 
should afford the average citizen any amuse- 
ment seems little short of impossible. 

One accepts as a natural sequence that abroad 
(where an hereditary nobility have ruled for cen- 
turies, and accustomed the people to look up to 
them as the visible embodiment of all that is 
splendid and unattainable in life) such interest 
should exist. That the home-coming of an Eng- 
lish or French nobleman to his estates should 



f9] 



excite the enthusiasm of hundreds more or less 
dependent upon him for their amusement or 
more material advantages; that his marriage to 
an heiress — meaning to them the re-opening 
of a long-closed chateau and the beginning of a 
period of prosperity for the distrid: — should ex- 
cite his neighbors is not to be wondered at. 

It is well known that whole regions have been 
made prosperous by the residence of a court, 
witness the wealth and trade brought into Scot- 
land by the Queen*s preference for "the Land 
of Cakes," and the discontent and poverty in 
Ireland from absenteeism and persistent avoid- 
ance of that country by the court. But in this 
land, where every reason for interesting one class 
in another seems lacking, that thousands of well- 
to-do people (half the time not born in this hem- 
isphere), should delightedly devour columns of 
incorred information about New York dances 
and Lenox house-parties, winter cruises, or New- 
port coaching parades, strikes the observer as the 
" unexpected " in its purest form. 

That this interest exists is absolutely certain. 
During a trip in the West, some seasons ago, I 
was dumbfounded to find that the members of 
a certain New York set were familiarly spoken 
of by their first names, and was assailed with 
all sorts of eager questions when it was discov- 
ered that I knew them. A certain young lady, 
at that time a belle in New York, was currently 
called Sally ^ and a well-known sportsman Fred^ 

[ 'o] 



THE morn ^nt> the st^^jr^ 

by thousands of people who had neverseen either 
of them. It seems impossible, does it not? Let us 
look a little closer into the reason of this inter- 
est, and we shall find how simple is the apparent 
paradox. 

Perhaps in no country, in all the world, do 
the immense middle classes lead such uninter- 
esting lives, and have such limited resources at 
their disposal for amusement or the passing of 
leisure hours. 

Abroad the military bands play constantly in 
the public parks; the museums and palaces are 
always open wherein to pass rainy Sunday af- 
ternoons ; every village has its religious fetes and 
local fair, attended with dancing and games. All 
these mental relaxations are lacking in our newer 
civilization ; life is stripped of everything that is 
not distinctly pradical; the dull round of weekly 
toil is only broken by the duller idleness of an 
American Sunday. Naturally, these people long 
for something outside of themselves and their 
narrow sphere. 

Suddenly there arises a class whose wealth 
permits them to break through the iron circle 
of work and boredom, who do pidhiresque and 
delightful things, which appeal diredly to the 
imagination; they build a summer residence com- 
plete, in six weeks, with furniture and bric-a-brac, 
on the top of a roadless mountain; they sail in 
fairylike yachts to summer seas, and marry their 
daughters to the heirs of ducal houses; they float 

[ '• ] 



wo%^LT>Lr w^rs ^ "Briv^rs 

up the Nile in dahabeeyah, or pass the "month 
of flowers" in far Japan. 

It is but human nature to delight in reading of 
these things. Here the great mass of the people 
find (and eagerly seize on), the element of ro- 
mance lacking in their lives, infinitely more 
enthralling than the doings of any novel's hero- 
ine. It is real! It is taking place! and — still 
deeper reason — in every ambitious American 
heart lingers the secret hope that with luck 
and good management they too may do those 
very things, or at least that their children will 
enjoy the fortunes they have gained, in just those 
ways. The gloom of the monotonous present is 
brightened, the patient toiler returns to his desk 
with something definite before him — an objec- 
tive point — towards which he can struggle; he 
knows that this is no impossible dream. Dozens 
have succeeded and prove to him what energy 
and enterprise can accomplish. 

Do not laugh at this suggestion; it is far truer 
than you imagine. Many a weary woman has 
turned from such reading to her narrow duties, 
feeling that life is not all work, and with renewed 
hope in the possibilities of the future. 

Doubtless a certain amount of purely idle 
curiosity is mingled with the other feelings. I 
remember quite well showing our city sights to 
a bored party of Western friends, and failing 
entirely to amuse them, when, happening to 
mention as we drove up town, "there goes Mr. 



THE moTH j:nt> the ST^'K^ 

Blank," (naming a prominent leaderof cotillions), 
my guests nearly fell over each other and out of 
the carriage in their eagerness to see the gentle- 
man of whom they had read so much, and who 
was, in those days, a power in his way, and sev- 
eral times after they expressed the greatest sat- 
isfadtion at having seen him. 

I have found, with rare exceptions, and the 
experience has been rather widely gathered all 
over the country, that this interest — or call it 
what you will — has been entirely without spite 
or bitterness, rather the delight of a child in a 
fairy story. For people are rarely envious of 
things far removed from their grasp. You will 
find that a woman who is bitter because her 
neighbor has a girl "help" or a more comfort- 
able cottage, rarely feels envy towards the owners 
of opera-boxes or yachts. Such heart-burnings 
(let us hope they are few) are among a class born 
in the shadow of great wealth, and bred up with 
tastes that they can neither relinquish nor sat- 
isfy. The large majority of people show only a 
good-natured inclination to chaff, none of the 
"class feeling" which certain papers and certain 
politicians try to excite. Outside of the large cities 
with their foreign-bred, semi-anarchistic popula- 
tions, the tone is perfectly friendly; for the sim- 
ple reason that it never entered into the head of 
any American to imagine that there was any 
class difference. To him his rich neighbors are 
simply his lucky neighbors, almost his relations, 

[ 13 ] 



who, starting from a common stock, have been 
able to "get there" sooner than he has done. 
So he wishes them luck on the voyage in which 
he expedts to join them as soon as he has had 
time to make a fortune. 

So long as the world exists, or at least until 
we have reformed it and adopted Mr. Bellamy's 
delightful scheme of existence as described in 
"Looking Backward," great fortunes will be 
made, and painful contrasts be seen, especially in 
cities, and it would seem to be the duty of the 
press to soften — certainly not to sharpen — the 
edge of discontent. As long as human nature is 
human nature, and the poor care to read of the 
doings of the more fortunate, by all means give 
them the reading they enjoy and demand, but 
let it be written in a kindly spirit so that it may 
be a cultivation as well as a recreation. Treat 
this perfectly natural and honest taste honestly 
and naturally, for, after all, it is 

The desire of the moth for the star^ 

Of the night for the morrow. 

The devotion to something afar 

From the sphere of our sorrow. 



[ H] 



•^ .^5^jS^jS:i^.^x.^^jS^jSx.j3^jS^.^XJSx..^ 



Contrasted Travelling 



WHEN our parents went to Europe 
fifty years ago, it was the event of a 
lifetime — a tour lovingly mapped out 
in advance with advice from travelled friends. 
Passports were procured, books read, wills made, 
and finally, prayers were offered up in church 
and solemn leave-taking performed. Once on 
the other side, descriptive letters were consci- 
entiously written, and eagerly read by friends 
at home, — in spite of these epistles being on 
the thinnest of paper and with crossing carried 
to a fine art, for postage was high in the forties. 
Above all, a journal was kept. 

Such a journal lies before me as I write. 
Four little volumes in worn morocco covers 
and faded "Italian" writing, more precious 
than all my other books combined, their sight 
recalls that lost time — my youth — when, as a 
reward, they were unlocked that I might look 
at the drawings, and the sweetest voice in the 
world would read to me from them! Happy, 
vanished days, that are so far away they seem 
to have been in another existence! 

The first volume opens with the voyage 
across the Atlantic, made in an American clip- 
per (a model unsurpassed the world over), 
which was accomplished in thirteen days, a feat 

[ 15] 



rarely equalled now, by sail. Genial Captain Nye 
was in command. The same who later, when 
a steam propelled vessel was offered him, re- 
fused, as unworthy of a seaman, "to boil a kettle 
across the ocean.*' 

Life friendships were made in those little 
cabins, under the swinging lamp the travellers 
re-read last volumes so as to be prepared to ap- 
preciate everything on landing. Ireland, England 
and Scotland were visited with an enthusiasm 
born of Scott, the tedium of long coaching jour- 
neys being beguiled by the first "numbers" of 
"Pickwick," over which the men of the party 
roared, but which the ladies did not care for, 
thinking it vulgar, and not to be compared to 
" Waverley," "Thaddeus of Warsaw," or "The 
Mysteries of Udolpho." 

A circular letter to our diplomatic agents 
abroad was presented in each city, a rite inva- 
riably followed by an invitation to dine, for 
which occasions a black satin frock with a low 
body and a few simple ornaments, including 
(supreme elegance) a diamond cross, were car- 
ried in the trunks. In London a travelling car- 
riage was bought and stocked, the indispensable 
courier engaged, half guide, half servant, who 
was exped:ed to explore a city, or wait at table, 
as occasion required. Four days were passed 
between Havre and Paris, and the slow progress 
across Europe was accomplished, Murray in one 
hand and Byron in the other. 

C 16] 



CONTR^SrET> TR^FE LLINQ 

One page used particularly to attrad: my 
boyish attention. It was headed by a naive 
little drawing of the carriage at an Italian inn 
door, and described how, after the dangers and 
discomforts of an Alpine pass, they descended 
by sunny slopes into Lombardy. Oh! the rap- 
ture that breathes from those simple pages! 
The vintage scenes, the mid-day halt for lunch- 
eon eaten in the open air, the afternoon start, 
the front seat of the carriage heaped with purple 
grapes, used to fire my youthful imagination 
and now recalls Madame de Stael's line on per- 
fect happiness: "To be young! to be in love! to 
be in Italy!" 

Do people enjoy Europe as much now? I 
doubt it! It has become too much a matter of 
course, a necessary part of the routine of life. 
Much of the bloom is brushed from foreign 
scenes by descriptive books and photographs, 
that St. Mark's or Mt. Blanc has become as 
familiar to a child's eye as the house he lives 
in, and in consequence the reality now instead 
of being a revelation is often a disappointment. 

In my youth, it was still an event to cross. 
I remember my first voyage on the old side- 
wheeled Scotia^ and Captain Judkins in a wheeled 
chair, and a perpetual bad temper, being pushed 
about the deck; and our delight, when the in- 
evitable female asking him (three days out) how 
far we were from land, got the answer "about 
a mile!" 

[ 17] 



"Indeed! How interesting! In which direc- 
tion?" 

"In that direction, madanij" shouted the cap- 
tain, pointing downward as he turned his back 
to her. 

If I remember, we were then thirteen days 
getting to Liverpool, and made the acquaint- 
ance on board of the people with whom we 
travelled during most of that winter. Imagine 
anyone now making an acquaintance on board 
asteamer! In those simple days people depended 
on the friendships made at summer hotels or 
boarding-houses for their visiting list. At present, 
when a girl comes out, her mother presents her 
to everybody she will be likely to know if she 
were to live a century. In the seventies, ladies 
cheerfully shared their state-rooms with women 
they did not know, and often became friends in 
consequence; but now, unless a certain deck-suite 
can be secured, with bath and sitting-room, on 
one or two particular "steamers," the great lady 
is in despair. Yet our mothers were quite as re- 
fined as the present generation, only they took 
life simply, as they found it. 

Children are now taken abroad so young, that 
before they have reached an age to appreciate 
what they see, Europe has become to them a 
twice-told tale. So true is this, that a receipt for 
making children good Americans is to bring them 
up abroad. Once they get back here it is hard to 
entice them away again. 

[ .8 ] 



CONrR^STET> TR^VE LLINQ 

With each improvement in the speed of our 
steamers, something of the glamour of Europe 
vanishes. The crowds that yearly rush across see 
and appreciate less in a lifetime than our parents 
did in their one tour abroad. A good lady of 
my acquaintance was complaining recently how 
much Paris bored her. 

"What can you do to pass the time?" she 
asked. I innocently answered that I knew noth- 
ing so entrancing as long mornings passed at the 
Louvre. 

"Oh, yes, I do that too," she replied, "but I 
like the 'Bon Marche' best!" 

A trip abroad has become a purely social 
funftion to a large number of wealthy Ameri- 
cans, including "presentation" in London and 
a winter in Romeor Cairo. And just as a "smart" 
Englishman is sure to tell you that he has never 
visited the "Tower," it has become good form 
to ignore the sight-seeing side of Europe ; hun- 
dreds of New Yorkers never seeing anything of 
Paris beyond the Rue de la Paix and the Bois. 
They would as soon think of going to Cluny or 
St. Denis as of visiting the museum in our park! 

Such people go to Fontainebleau because they 
are buying furniture, and they wish to see the 
best models. They go to Versailles on the coach 
and "do" the Palace during the half-hour be- 
fore luncheon. Beyond that, enthusiasm rarely 
carries them. As soon as they have settled them- 
selves at the Bristol or the Rhin begins the end- 

[ 19] 



less treadmill of leaving cards on all the people 
just seen at home, and whom theywill meet again 
in a couple of months at Newport or Bar Har- 
bor. This duty and the all-entrancing occupation 
of getting clothes fills up every spare hour. In- 
deed, clothes seem to pervade the air of Paris in 
May, the conversation rarely deviating from 
them. If you meet a lady you know looking ill, 
and ask the cause, it generally turns out to be 
"four hours a day standing to be fitted." In- 
credible as it may seem, I have been told of one 
plain maiden lady, who makes a trip across, 
spring and autumn, with the sole objed: of get- 
ting her two yearly outfits. 

Remembering the hundreds of cultivated 
people whose dream in life (often unrealized 
from lack of means) has been to go abroad and 
visit the scenes their reading has made familiar, 
and knowing what such a trip would mean to 
them, and how it would be looked back upon 
during the rest of an obscure life, I felt it almost 
a duty to "suppress" a wealthy female (doubtless 
an American cousin of Lady Midas) when she 
informed me, the other day, that decidedly she 
would not go abroad this spring. 

"It is not necessary. Worth has my meas- 
ures! 



[20] 



The Outer and the Inner 

Woman 



IT is a sad commentary on our boasted civil- 
ization that cases of shoplifting occur more 
and more frequently each year, in which the 
delinquents are women of education and refine- 
ment, or at least belong to families and occupy 
positions in which one would expedl to find those 
qualities! The reason, however, is not difficult 
to discover. 

In the wake of our hasty and immature pros- 
perity has come (as it does to all suddenly en- 
riched societies) a love of ostentation, a desire 
to dazzle the crowd by displays of luxury and 
rich trappings indicative of crude and vulgar 
standards. The newly acquired money, instead 
of being expended for solid comforts or articles 
which would afford lasting satisfaction, is lav- 
ished on what can be worn in public, or the 
outer shell of display, while the home table and 
fireside belongings arenegle6ted. A glance around 
our theatres, or at the men and women in our 
crowded thoroughfares, is sufficient to reveal to 
even a casual observer that the mania for fine 
clothes and what is costly, per se, has become 
the besetting sin of our day and our land. 

The tone of most of the papers and of our 
theatrical advertisements refleds this feeling. 

[2, ] 



The amount of money expended for a work of 
art or a new building is mentioned before any 
comment as to its beauty or fitness. A play is 
spoken of as "Manager So and So's thirty- 
thousand-dollar produdion!" The fad: that a 
favorite adtresswill appear in four different dresses 
during the three ads of a comedy, each toilet 
being a special creation designed for her by a 
leading Parisian house, is considered of supreme 
importance and is dwelt upon in the programme 
as a special attradion. 

It would be astonishing if the taste of our 
women were different, considering the way clothes 
are eternally being dangled before their eyes. 
Leading papers publish illustrated supplements 
devoted exclusively to the subjed of attire, thus 
carrying temptation into every humble home, 
and suggesting unattainable luxuries. Windows 
in many of the larger shops contain life-sized 
manikins loaded with the latest costly and ephem- 
eral caprices of fashion arranged to catch the 
eye of the poorer class of women, who stand in 
hundreds gazing at the display like larks at- 
traded by a mirror! Watch those women as they 
turn away, and listen to their sighs of discontent 
and envy. Do they not tell volumes about petty 
hopes and ambitions? 

I do not refer to the wealthy women whose 
toilets are in keeping with their incomes and the 
general footing of their households; that they 
should spend more or less in fitting themselves 



The OVrE%^ and the INNE%^ WOM^D^ 

out daintily is of little importance. The point 
where this subje6t becomes painful is in families 
of small means where young girls imagine that 
to be elaborately dressed is the first essential of 
existence, and, in consequence, bend their labors 
and their intelligence towards this end. Last 
spring I asked an old friend where she and her 
daughters intended passing their summer. Her 
answer struck me as being charadleristic enough 
to quote: "We should much prefer," she said, 
"returning to Bar Harbor, for we all enjoy that 
place and have many friends there. But the truth 
is, my daughters have bought themselves very 
little in the way of toilet this year, as our finances 
are not in a flourishing condition. So my poor 
girls will be obliged to make their last year's 
dresses do for another season. Under these cir- 
cumstances, it is out of the question for us to re- 
turn a second summer to the same place." 

I do not know how this anecdote strikes my 
readers. It made me thoughtful and sad to think 
that, in a family of intelligent and practical wo- 
men, such a reason should be considered suffi- 
cient to outweigh enjoyment, social relations, 
even health, and allowed to change the plans of 
an entire family. 

As American women are so fond of copying 
English ways they should be willing to take a 
few lessons on the subje6l of raiment from across 
the water. As this is not intended to be a dis- 
sertation on "How to Dress Well on Nothing 

in ] 



a Year," and as I feel the greatest diffidence in 
approaching a subje6t of which I know abso- 
lutely nothing, it will be better to sheer off from 
these reefs and quicksands. Every one who reads 
these lines will know perfedily well what is meant, 
when reference is made to the good sense and 
practical utility of English women's dress. 

What disgusts and angers me (when my way 
takes me into our surface or elevated cars or 
into ferry boats and local trains) is the utter 
dissonance between the outfit of most of the wo- 
men I meet and their position and occupation. 
So universal is this, that it might almost be laid 
down as an axiom, that the American woman, 
no matter in what walk of life you observe her, 
or what the time or the place, is always persis- 
tently and grotesquely overdressed. From the 
women who frequent the hotels of our summer 
or winter resorts, down all the steps of the social 
staircase to the char-woman, who consents (spas- 
modically) to remove the dust and waste-papers 
from my office, there seems to be the same com- 
plete disregard of fitness. The other evening, in 
leaving my rooms, I brushed against a portly 
person in the half-light of the corridor. There 
was a shimmer of (what appeared to my inex- 
perienced eyes as) costly stuffs, a huge hat crowned 
the shadow itself, "topped by nodding plumes," 
which seemed to account for the depleted condi- 
tion of my feather duster. 

I found on inquiring of the janitor, that the 



The OUTE'E^ and the INNE^ IFOM^O^ 

dressy person I had met, was the char-woman in 
street attire, and that a closet was set aside in 
the building, for the special purpose of her 
morning and evening transformations, which 
she underwent in the belief that her social 
position in Avenue A would suffer, should she 
appear in the streets wearing anything less costly 
than seal-skin and velvet or such imitations of 
those expensive materials as her stipend would 
permit. 

I have as tenants of a small wooden house in 
Jersey City, a bank clerk, his wife and their 
three daughters. He earns in the neighborhood 
of fifteen hundred dollars a year. Their rent (with 
which, by the way, they are always in arrears) is 
three hundred dollars. I am favored spring and 
autumn by a visit from the ladies of that family, 
in the hope (generally flitile) of inducing me to 
do some ornamental papering or painting in their 
residence, subjeds on which they have by ex- 
perience found my agent to be unapproachable. 
When those four women descend upon me, I 
am fairly dazzled by the splendor of their attire, 
and lost in wonder as to how the price of all 
that finery can have been squeezed out of the 
twelve remaining hundreds of their income. 
When I meet the father he is shabby to the 
outer limits of the genteel. His hat has, I am 
sure, supported the suns and snowstorms of a 
dozen seasons. There is a threadbare shine on his 
apparel that suggests a heartache in each whitened 

[25] 



seam, but the ladles are mirrors of fashion, as well 
asmouldsof form. What can remain for any creat- 
ure comforts after all those fine clothes have been 
paid for? And how much is put away for the years 
when the long-suffering money maker will be 
past work, or saved towards the time when sick- 
ness or accident shall appear on the horizon? 
How those ladies had the "nerve" to enter a 
ferry boat or crowd into a cable car, dressed as 
they were, has always been a marvel to me. A 
landau and two liveried servants would barely 
have been in keeping with their appearance. 

Not long ago, a great English nobleman, who 
is also famous in the yachting world, visited this 
country accompanied by his two daughters, 
high-bred and genial ladies. No self-respedling 
American shop girl or fashionable typewriter 
would have condescended to appear in the inex- 
pensive attire which those English women wore. 
Wherever one met them, at dinner,/^7d', or ball, 
they were always the most simply dressed women 
in the room. I wonder if it ever occurred to any 
of their gorgeously attired hostesses, that it was 
because their trans-atlantic guests were so sure 
of their position, that they contented themselves 
with such simple toilets knowing that nothing 
they might wear could either improve or alter their 
standing. 

In former ages, sumptuary laws were enadled 
by parental governments, in the hope of sup- 
pressing extravagance in dress, the state of affairs 

[.6] 



The OUTE^ and the INNEI^ JVOm^d^ 

we deplore now, not being a new development 
of human weakness, but as old as wealth. 

The desire to shine by the splendor of one's 
trappings is the first idea of the parvenu, es- 
pecially here in this country, where the ambi- 
tious are denied the pleasure of acquiring a title, 
and where official rank carries with it so little 
social weight. Few more striking ways present 
themselves to the crude and half-educated for 
the expenditure of a new fortune than the pur- 
chase of sumptuous apparel, the satisfaction be- 
ing immediate and material. The wearer of a 
complete and perfed: toilet must experience a de- 
light of which the uninitiated know nothing, for 
such cruel sacrifices are made and so many pri- 
vations endured to procure this satisfadlion. 
When I see groups of women, clad in the latest 
designs of purple and fine linen, stand shivering 
on street corners of a winter night, until they can 
crowd into a car, I doubt if the joy they get 
from their clothes, compensates them for the 
creature comforts they are forced to forego, and 
I wonder if it never occurs to them to spend less 
on their wardrobes and so feel they can afford 
to return from a theatre or concert comfortably, 
in a cab, as a foreign woman, with their income 
would do. 

There is a stoical determination about the 
American point of view that compels a certain 
amount of resped:. Our countrywomen will deny 
themselves pleasures, will economize on their food 

[27] 



WO'B^LT>Lr W^rS iff "BTTF^rS 

and will remain in town during the summer, but 
when walking abroad they must be clad in the 
best, so that no one may know by their appear- 
ance if the income be counted by hundreds or 
thousands. 

While these standards prevail and the female 
mind is fixed on this subjedt with such dire in- 
tent, it is not astonishing that a weaker sister is 
occasionally tempted beyond her powers of re- 
sistance. Nor that each day a new case of a well- 
dressed woman thieving in a shop reaches our ears. 
The poor feeble-minded creature is not to blame. 
She is but the reflexion of the minds around 
her and is probably like the lady Emerson tells 
of, who confessed to him "that the sense of being 
perfedlly well-dressed had given her a feeling of 
inward tranquillity which religion was powerless 
to bestow." 



[28] 



On Some Gilded Misalliances 



A DEAR old American lad^, who lived 
the greater part of her life in Rome, 
and received every body worth knowing 
in her spacious drawing-rooms, far up in the dim 
vastnesses of a Roman palace, used to say that 
she had only known one really happy marriage 
made by an American girl abroad. 

In those days, being young and innocent, I 
considered that remark cynical, and in my heart 
thought nothing could be more romantic and 
charming than for a fair compatriot to assume 
an historic title and retire to her husband's estates, 
and rule smilingly over him and a devoted ten- 
antry, as in the last adt of a comic opera, when a 
rose-colored light is burning and the orchestra 
plays the last brilliant chords of awedding march. 
There seemed to my perverted sense a certain 
poetic justice about the fad: that money, gained 
honestly butprosaically,in groceries or gas, should 
go to regild an ancient blazon or prop up the 
crumbling walls of some stately palace abroad. 
Many thoughtful years and many cruel reali- 
ties have taught me that my gracious hostess of 
the "seventies" was right, and that marriage 
under these conditions is apt to be much more 
like the comic opera after the curtain has been 
rung down, when the lights are out, the applaud- 

[29] 



ing public gone home, and the weary adors 
brought slowly back to the present and the pos- 
itive, are wondering how they are to pay their 
rent or dodge the warrant in ambush around the 
corner. 

International marriages usually come about 
from a deficient knowledge of the world. The 
father becomes rich, the family travel abroad, 
some mutual friend (often from purely interested 
motives) produces a suitor for the hand of the 
daughter, in the shape of a "prince" with a title 
that makes the whole simple American family 
quiver with delight. 

After a few visits the suitor declares himself; 
the girl is flattered, the father loses his head, seeing 
visions of his loved daughter hob-nobbing with 
royalty, and (intoxicating thought!) snubbing 
the "swells" at home who had shown reludance 
to recognize him and his family. 

It is next to impossible for him to get any 
reliable information about his future son-in-law 
in a country where, as an American, he has few 
social relations, belongs to no club, and whose 
idiom is a sealed book to him. Every circum- 
stance conspires to keep the flaws on the article 
for sale out of sight and place the suitor in an 
advantageous light. Several weeks' "courting" 
follows, paterfamilias agrees to part with a hand- 
some share of his earnings, and a marriage is 
"arranged." 

In the case where the girl has retained some 

[30] 



ON SOME qiLDED MISALLIANCES 

of her self-resped the suitor is made to come to 
her country for the ceremony. And, that the 
contrast between European ways and our simple 
habits may not be too striking, an establishment 
is hastily got together, with hired liveries and 
new-bought carriages, as in a recent case in this 
state. The sensational papers write up this "in- 
ternational union," and publish "faked "portraits 
of the bride and her noble spouse. The sovereign 
of the groom's country (enchanted that some 
more American money is to be imported into 
his land) sends an economical present and an 
autograph letter. The ad: ends. Limelight and 
slow music! 

In a few years rumors of dissent and trouble 
float vaguely back to the girFs family. Finally, 
either a great scandal occurs, and there is one 
dishonored home the more in the world, or an 
expatriated woman, thousands of miles from the 
friends and relatives who might be of some com- 
fort to her, makes up her mind to accept "any- 
thing" for the sake of her children, and attempts 
to build up some sort of an existence out of the 
remains of her lost illusions, and the father wakes 
up from his dream to realize that his wealth has 
only served to ruin what he loved best in all the 
world. 

Sometimes the conditions are delightfully 
comic, as in a well-known case, where the daugh- 
ter, who married into an indolent, happy-go- 
lucky Italian family, had inherited her father's 

[31 ] 



WO'E^LT>LY W^YS & "BTW^TS 

business push and energy along with his fortune, 
and immediately set about "running" her hus- 
band's estate as she had seen her father do his 
bank. She tried to revive a half-forgotten indus- 
try in the distridt, scraped and whitewashed their 
piduresque old villa, proposed her husband's 
entering business, and in short dashed head 
down against all his inherited traditions and na- 
tional prejudices, until her new family loathed 
the sight of the brisk American face, and the 
poor she had tried to help, sulked in their newly 
drained houses and refused to be comforted. 
Her ways were not Italian ways, and she seemed 
to the nun-like Italian ladies, almost unsexed, 
as she tramped about the fields, talking artificial 
manure and subsoil drainage with the men. Yet 
neither she nor her husband was to blame. The 
young Italian had but followed the teachings of 
his family, which decreed that the only honor- 
able way for an aristocrat to acquire wealth was 
to marry it. The American wife honestly tried 
to do her duty in this new position, naively 
thinking she could engraft transatlantic "go" 
upon the indolent Italian character. Her work 
was in vain; she made herself and her husband 
so unpopular that they are now living in this 
country, regretting too late the error of their 
ways. 

Another case but little less laughable, is that 
of a Boston girl with a neat little fortune of her 
own, who, when married to the young Viennese 



ON SOME giLDED MISALLIANCES 

of her choice, found that he expe6led her to 
Hve with his family on the third floor of their 
"palace'* (the two lower floors being rented to 
foreigners), and as there was hardly enough 
money for a box at the opera, she was not ex- 
peded to go, whereas his position made it neces- 
sary for him to have a stall and appear there 
nightly among the men of his rank, the aston- 
ished and disillusioned Bostonian remaining at 
home en tete-a-tete with the women of his family, 
who seemed to think this the most natural ar- 
rangement in the world. 

It certainly is astonishing that we, the most 
patriotic of nations, with such high opinion of 
ourselves and our institutions, should be so ready 
to hand over our daughters and our ducats to the 
first foreigner who asks for them, often requir- 
ing less information about him than we should 
consider necessary before buying a horse or a 
dog. 

Women of no other nation have this mania 
for espousing aliens. Nowhere else would a girl 
with a large fortune dream of marrying out of 
her country. Her highest ideal of a husband 
would be a man of her own kin. It is the rarest 
thing in the world to find a well-born French, 
Spanish, or Italian woman married to a foreigner 
and living away from her country. How can a 
woman exped: to be happy separated from all 
the ties and traditions of her youth? If she is 
taken abroad young, she may still hope to re- 

i22 3 



place her friends as is often done. But the real 
reason of unhappiness (greater and deeper than 
this) lies in the fundamental difference of the 
whole social stru6lure between our country and 
that of her adoption, and the radically different 
way of looking at every side of life. 

Surely a girl must feel that a man who allows 
a marriage to be arranged for him (and only 
signs the contract because its pecuniary clauses 
are to his satisfadion, and who would withdraw 
in a moment if these were suppressed), must 
have an entirely different point of view from her 
own on all the vital issues of life. 

Foreigners undoubtedly make excellent hus- 
bands for their own women. But they are, ex- 
cept in rare cases, unsatisfactory helpmeets for 
American girls. It is impossible to touch on 
more than a side or two of this subjedt. But as 
an illustration the following contrasted stories 
may be cited: 

Two sisters of an aristocratic American family, 
each with an income of over forty thousand 
dollars a year, recently married French noble- 
men. They naturally expected to continue abroad 
the life they had led at home, in which opera 
boxes, saddle horses, and constant entertaining 
were matters of course. In both cases, our com- 
patriots discovered that their husbands (neither 
of them penniless) had entirely different views. 
In the first place, they were told that it was 
considered "bad form" in France for young 

[34] 



ON SOME giLDED MISALLIANCES 

married women to entertain; besides, the money- 
was needed for improvements, and in many 
other ways, and as every well-to-do French 
family puts aside at least a third of its income 
as dots for the children (boys as well as girls), 
these brides found themselves cramped for 
money for the first time in their lives, and 
obliged, during their one month a year in Paris, 
to put up with hired traps, and depend on their 
friends for evenings at the opera. 

This story is a telling set-off to the case of an 
American wife, who one day received a wind- 
fall in the form of a check for a tidy amount. 
She immediately proposed a trip abroad to her 
husband, but found that he preferred to remain 
at home in the society of his horses and dogs. 
So our fair compatriot starts oflT (with his full 
consent), has her outing, spends her little "pile," 
and returns after three or four months to the 
home of her delighted spouse. 

Do these two stories need any comment? Let 
our sisters and their friends think twice before 
they make themselves irrevocably wheels in a 
machine whose working is unknown to them, 
lest they be torn to pieces as it moves. Having 
the good luck to be born in the "paradise of wo- 
men," let them beware how they leave it, charm 
the serpent never so wisely, for they may find 
themselves, like the Peri, outside the gate. 



[35] 



N'' 6 

The Complacency of 

Mediocrity 

FULL as small intelleds are of queer kinks, 
unexplained turnings and groundless 
likes and dislikes, the bland content- 
ment that buoys up the incompetent is the most 
difficult of all vagaries to account for. Rarely do 
twenty-four hours pass without examples of this 
exasperating weakness appearing on the surface 
of those shallows that commonplace people so 
naively call "their minds." 

What one would exped: is extreme modesty, 
in the half-educated or the ignorant, and self- 
approbation higher up in the scale, where it 
might more reasonably dwell. Experience, how- 
ever, teaches that exac5lly the opposite is the 
case among those who have achieved success. 

The accidents of a life turned by chance out of 
the beaten tracks, have thrown me at times into 
acquaintanceship with some of the greater lights 
of the last thirty years. And not only have they 
been, as a rule, most unassuming men and wo- 
men; but in the majority of cases positively 
self-depreciatory; doubting of themselves and 
their talents, constantly aiming at greater per- 
fedlion in their art or a higher development of 
their powers, never contented with what they 
have achieved, beyond the idea that it has been 

[36] 



THE COMPLACENCY OF MEDIOCRITY 

another step toward their goal. Knowing this, 
it is always a shock on meeting the mediocre 
people who form such a discouraging majority 
in any society, to discover that they are all so 
pleased with themselves, their achievements, 
their place in the world, and their own ability 
and discernment! 

Who has not sat chafing in silence while Me- 
diocrity, in a white waistcoat and jangling fobs, 
occupied the after-dinner hour in imparting sec- 
ond-hand information as his personal views on 
literature and art? Can you not hear him saying 
once again : " I don't pretend to know anything 
about art and all that sort of thing, you know, 
but when I go to an exhibition I can always pick 
out the best pictures at a glance. Sort of a way 
I have, and I never make mistakes, you know." 

Then go and watch, as I have, Henri Roche- 
fort as he laboriously forms the opinions that 
are to appear later in one of his ^^ Salons ^^ realiz- 
ing the while that he \s facile princeps among the 
art critics of his day, that with a line he can make 
or mar a reputation and by a word draw the ad- 
miring crowd around an unknown canvas. While 
Rochefort toils and ponders and hesitates, do 
you suppose a doubt as to his own astuteness 
ever dims the self-complacency of White Waist- 
coat? Never! 

There lies the strength of the feeble-minded. 
By a special dispensation of Providence, they 
can never see but one side of a subjedl, so are 

[37] 



always convinced that they are right, and from 
the height of their contentment, look down on 
those who chance to differ with them. 

A lady who has gathered into her dainty sa- 
lons the fruit of many years' careful study and 
tireless "weeding'' will ask anxiously if you are 
quite sure you like the effe6l of her latest acqui- 
sition — some eighteenth-century statuette or 
screen (flotsam, probably, from the great ship- 
wreck of Versailles), and listen earnestly to your 
verdid:. The good soul who has just furnished 
her house by contract, with the latest "Louis 
Fourteenth Street" productions, conduds you 
complacently through her chambers of horrors, 
wreathed in tranquil smiles, born of ignorance 
and that smug assurance granted only to the — 
small. 

When a small intelled: goes in for cultivating 
itself and improving its mind, you realize what 
the poet meant in asserting that a little learning 
was a dangerous thing. For Mediocrity is apt, 
when it dines out, to get up a subjed: before- 
hand, and announce to an astonished circle, as 
quite new and personal discoveries, that the 
Renaissance was introduced into France from 
Italy, or that Columbus in his day made im- 
portant "finds." 

When the incompetent advance another step 
and write or paint — which, alas ! is only too fre- 
quent — the world of art and literature is flooded 
with their productions. When White Waistcoat, 

[38] 



THE COMPLACENCY OF MEDIOCRITT 

for example, takes to painting, late in life, and 
comes to you, canvas in hand, for criticism (read 
praise), he is apt to remark modestly: 

"Corot never painted until he was fifty, and 
I am only forty-eight. So I feel I should not 
let myself be discouraged." 

The problem of life is said to be the finding 
of a happiness that is not enjoyed at the ex- 
pense of others, and surely this class have solved 
that Sphinx's riddle, for they float through their 
days in a dream of complacency disturbed neither 
by corroding doubt nor harassed by jealousies. 

Whole families of feeble-minded people, on 
the strength of an ancestor who achieved dis- 
tindlion a hundred years ago, live in constant 
thanksgiving that they "are not as other men." 
None of the great man's descendants have done 
anything to be particularly proud of since their 
remote progenitor signed the Declaration of In- 
dependence or governed a colony. They have 
vegetated in small provincial cities and inter- 
married into other equally fortunate families, 
but the sense of superiority is ever present to 
sustain them, under straitened circumstances 
and diminishing prestige. The world may move 
on around them, but they never advance. Why 
should they? They have reached perfe6lion. The 
brains and enterprise that have revolutionized 
our age knock in vain at their doors. They be- 
long to that vast "majority that is always in the 
wrong," being so pleased with themselves, their 



ways, and their feeble little lines of thought, 
that any change or advancement gives their sys- 
tem a shock. 

A painter I know, was once importuned for 
a sketch by a lady of this class. After many de- 
lays and renewed demands he presented her one 
day, when she and some friends were visiting his 
studio, with a delightful open-air study simply 
framed. She seemed confused at the offering, to 
his astonishment, as she had not lacked aplomb 
in asking for the sketch. After much blushing 
and fumbling she succeeded in getting the paint- 
ing loose, and handing back the frame, remarked : 

"I will take the painting, but you must keep 
the frame. My husband would never allow me 
to accept anything of value from you!" — and 
smiled on the speechless painter, doubtless 
charmed with her own tad:. 

Complacent people are the same drag on a 
society that a brake would be to a coach going 
up hill. They are the "eternal negative" and 
would extinguish, if they could, any light stronger 
than that to which their weak eyes have been 
accustomed. They look with astonishment and 
distrust at any one trying to break away from 
their tiresome old ways and habits, and wonder 
why all the world is not as pleased with their 
personalities as they are themselves, suggesting, 
if you are willing to waste your time listening to 
their twaddle, that there is something radically 
wrong in any innovation, that both "Church and 

[40] 



THE COMPLJCENCr OF MEDIOCRITY 

State*' will be imperilled if things are altered. 
No blight, no mildew is more fatal to a plant 
than the "complacent'' are to the world. They 
resent any progress and are offended if you men- 
tion before them any new standards or points of 
view. "What has been good enough for us and 
our parents should certainly be satisfactory to the 
younger generations." It seems to the contented 
like pure presumption on the part of their ac- 
quaintances to wander after strange gods, in the 
shape of new ideals, higher standards of culture, 
or a perfected refinement of surroundings. 

We are perhaps wrong to pity complacent 
people. It is for another class our sympathy 
should be kept; for those who cannot refrain 
from doubting of themselves and the value of 
their work — those unfortunate gifted and artis- 
tic spirits who descend too often the via dolorosa 
of discontent and despair, who have a higher 
ideal than their neighbors, and, in struggling 
after an unattainable perfedion, fall by the way- 
side. 



[41 ] 



The Discontent of Talent 



THE complacency that buoys up self- 
sufficient souls, soothing them with 
the illusion that they themselves, their 
towns, country, language, and habits are above 
improvement, causing them to shudder, as at a 
sacrilege, if any changes are suggested, is fortu- 
nately limited to a class of stay-at-home nonen- 
tities. In proportion as it is common among 
them, is it rare or delightfully absent in any 
society of gifted or imaginative people. 

Among our globe-trotting compatriots this 
defed: is much less general than in the older 
nations of the world, for the excellent reason, 
that the moment a man travels or takes the 
trouble to know people of different nationali- 
ties, his armor of complacency receives so severe 
a blow, that it is shattered forever, the wanderer 
returning home wiser and much more mod- 
est. There seems to be something fatal to con- 
ceit in the air of great centres; professionally 
or in general society a man so soon finds his 
level. 

The "great world" may foster other faults; 
human nature is sure to develop some in every 
walk of life. Smug contentment, however, dis- 
appears in its rarefied atmosphere, giving place 
to a craving for improvement, a nervous alert- 

[42] 



THE T> ISCONTENT OF TALENT 

ness that keeps the mind from stagnating and 
urges it on to do its best. 

It is never the beautiful woman who sits 
down in smiHng serenity before her mirror. 
She is tireless in her efforts to enhance her 
beauty and set it off to the best advantage. 
Her figure is never slender enough^ nor her 
carriage sufficiently ered: to satisfy. But the 
"frump" will let herself and all her surround- 
ings go to seed, not from humbleness of mind 
or an overwhelming sense of her own unworthi- 
nesSj but in pure complacent conceit. 

A criticism to which the highly gifted lay them- 
selves open from those who do not understand 
them, is their love of praise, the critics failing 
to grasp the fad: that this passion for measur- 
ing one's self with others, like the gad-fly pur- 
suing poor lo, never allows a moment's repose 
in the green pastures of success, but goads them 
constantly up the rocky sides of endeavor. It 
is not that they love flattery, but that they need 
approbation as a counterpoise to the dark mo- 
ments of self-abasement and as a sustaining aid 
for higher flights. 

Many years ago I was present at a final sitting 
which my master, Carolus Duran, gave to one of 
my fair compatriots. He knew that the lady was 
leaving Paris on the morrow, and that in an 
hour, her husband and his friends were coming 
to see and criticise the portrait — always a ter- 
rible ordeal for an artist. 

[43 ] 



To any one familiar with this painter's moods, 
it was evident that the result of the sitting was 
not entirely satisfactory. The quick breathing, 
the impatient tapping movement of the foot, 
the swift backward springs to obtain a better 
view, so chara6leristic of him in moments of 
doubt, and which had twenty years before earned 
him the name of /^ danseur from his fellow-copy- 
ists at the Louvre, betrayed to even a casual ob- 
server that his discouragement and discontent 
were at boiling point. 

The sound of a bell and a murmur of voices 
announced the entrance of the visitors into the 
vast studio. After the formalities of introduc- 
tion had been accomplished the new-comers 
glanced at the portrait, but uttered never a 
word. From it they passed in a perfedly casual 
manner to an inspedion of the beautiful con- 
tents of the room, investigating the tapestries, 
admiring the armor, and finally, after another 
glance at the portrait, the husband remarked: 
"You have given my wife a jolly long neck, 
haven't you?*' and, turning to his friends, be- 
gan laughing and chatting in English. 

If vitriol had been thrown on my poor mas- 
ter's quivering frame, the efFed could not have 
been more instantaneous, his ignorance of the 
language spoken doubtless exaggerating his im- 
pression of being ridiculed. Suddenly he turned 
very white, and before any of us had divined his 
intention he had seized a Japanese sword lying 

[44] 



THE T> ISCONTENT OF TALENT 

by and cut a dozen gashes across the canvas. 
Then, dropping his weapon, he flung out of 
the room, leaving his sitter and her friends in 
speechless consternation, to wonder then and 
ever after in what way they had offended him. 
In their opinions, if a man had talent and un- 
derstood his business, he should produce por- 
traits with the same ease that he would answer 
dinner invitations, and if they paid for, they were 
in no way bound also to praise, his work. They 
were entirely pleased with the result, but did 
not consider it necessary to tell him so, no idea 
having crossed their minds that he might be in 
one of those moods so frequent with artistic na- 
tures, when words of approbation and praise are 
as necessary to them, as the air we breathe is to 
us, mortals of a commoner clay. 

Even in the theatrical and operatic professions, 
those hotbeds of conceit, you will generally find 
among the "stars'* abysmal depths of discour- 
agement and despair. One great tenor, who has 
delighted New York audiences during several 
winters past, invariably announces to his inti- 
mates on arising that his "voice has gone," and 
that, in consequence he will "never sing again," 
and has to be caressed and cajoled back into 
some semblance of confidence before attempting 
a performance. This same artist, with an almost 
limitless repertoire and a reputation no new suc- 
cesses could enhance, recently risked all to sing 
what he considered a higher class of music, in- 

[45] 



finitely more fatiguing to his voice, because he 
was impelled onward by the ideal that forces ge- 
nius to constant improvement and development 
of its powers. 

What the people who meet these artists oc- 
casionally at a private concert or behind the 
scenes during the intense strain of a representa- 
tion, take too readily for monumental egoism 
and conceit, is, the greater part of the time, 
merely the desire for a sustaining word, a longing 
for the stimulant of praise. 

All a(5lors and singers are but big children, 
and must be humored and petted like children 
when you wish them to do their best. It is neces- 
sary for them to feel in touch with their au- 
diences; to be assured that they are not falling 
below the high ideals formed for their work. 

Some winters ago a performance at the opera 
nearly came to a standstill because an all-con- 
quering soprano was found crying in her dress- 
ing-room. After many weary moments of conso- 
lation and questioning, it came out that she felt 
quite sure she no longer had any talent. One of 
the other singers had laughed at her voice, and 
in consequence there was nothing left to live 
for. A half-hour later, owing to judicious "treat- 
ment," she was singing gloriously and bowing 
her thanks to thunders of applause. 

Rather than blame this divine discontent that 
has made man what he is to-day, let us glorify 
and envy it, pitying the while the frail mortal 

[46] 



THE "DISCONTENT OF TALENT 

vessels it consumes with its flame. No adulation 
can turn such natures from their goal, and in 
the hour of triumph the slave is always at their 
side to whisper the word of warning. This dis- 
content is the leaven that has raised the whole 
loaf of dull humanity to better things and higher 
efforts, those privileged to feel it are the suns that 
illuminate our system. If on these luminaries ob- 
servers have discovered spots, it is well to re- 
member that these blemishes are but the defedts 
of their qualities, and better far than the total 
eclipse that shrouds so large a part of humanity 
in colorless complacency. 

It will never be known how many master- 
pieces have been lost to the world because at 
the critical moment a friend has not been at 
hand with the stimulantof sympathy and encour- 
agement needed by an overworked, straining ar- 
tist who was beginning to lose confidence in him- 
self; to soothe his irritated nerves with the balm 
of praise, and take his poor aching head on a 
friendly shoulder and let him sob out there all 
his doubt and discouragement. 

So let us not be niggardly or ungenerous in 
meting out to struggling fellow-beings their 
share, and perchance a little more than their 
share of approbation and applause, poor enough 
return, after all, for the pleasure their labors have 
procured us. What adequate compensation can 
we mete out to an author for the hours of de- 
light and self-forgetfulness his talent has brought 

[47] 



to us in moments of loneliness, illness, or grief? 
What can pay our debt to a painter who has fixed 
on canvas the face we love? 

The little return that it is in our power to 
make for all the joy these gifted fellow-beings 
bring into our lives is (closing our eyes to minor 
imperfedlions) to warmly applaud them as they 
move upward, along their stony path. 



[48] 



N'- 8 

Slouch 



I SHOULD like to see, in every school- 
room of our growing country, in every 
business office, at the railway stations, and 
on street corners, large placards placed with 
"Do not slouch" printed thereon in distindt 
and imposing chara6lers. If ever there was a 
tendency that needed nipping in the bud (I 
fear the bud is fast becoming a full-blown flower), 
it is this discouraging national failing. 

Each year when I return from my spring 
wanderings, among the benighted and effete 
nations of the Old World, on whom the untrav- 
elled American looks down from the height of 
his superiority, I am struck anew by the contrast 
between the trim, well-groomed officials left be- 
hind on one side of the ocean and the happy- 
go-lucky, slouching individuals I find on the 
other. 

As I ride up town this unpleasant impression 
deepens. In the "little Mother Isle" I have 
just left, bus-drivers have quite a coaching air, 
with hat and coat of knowing form. They sport 
flowers in their button-holes and salute other 
bus-drivers, when they meet, with a twist of 
whip and elbow refreshingly corre6l, showing 
that they take pride in their calling, and have 
been at some pains to turn themselves out as 

[49] 



wo%^LT>Lr w^rs & "Btw^ts 

smart in appearance as finances would allow. 

Here, on the contrary, the stage and cab 
drivers I meet seem to be under a blight, and to 
have lost all interest in life. They lounge on the 
box, their legs straggling aimlessly, one hand 
holding the reins, the other hanging dejededly 
by the side. Yet there is little doubt that these 
heartbroken citizens are earning double what 
their London confreres gain. The shadow of 
the national peculiarity is over them. 

When I get to my rooms, the elevator boy 
is reclining in the lift, and hardly raises his 
eye-lids as he languidly manoeuvres the rope. 
I have seen that boy now for months, but never 
when his boots and clothes were brushed orwhen 
his cravat was not riding proudly above his col- 
lar. On occasions I have offered him pins, which 
he took wearily, doubtless because it was less 
trouble than to refuse. The next day, however, 
his cravat again rode triumphant, mocking my 
efforts to keep it in its place. His hair, too, has 
been a cause of wonder to me. How does he 
manage to have it always so long and so un- 
kempt? More than once, when expeding callers, 
I have bribed him to have it cut, but it seem^ed 
to grow in the night, back to its poetic profu- 
sion. 

In what does this noble disregard for appear- 
ances which charaderizes American men origi- 
nate? Our climate, as some suggest, or discour- 
agement at not all being millionaires? It more 

[50] 



SLOUCH 

likely comes from an absence with us of the mil- 
itary training that abroad goes so far toward 
licking young men into shape. 

I shall never forget the surprise on the face 
of a French statesman to whom I once ex- 
pressed my sympathy for his country, laboring 
under the burden of so vast a standing army. 
He answered: 

"The financial burden is doubtless great; but 
you have others. Witness your pension expen- 
ditures. With us the money drawn from the peo- 
ple is used in such a way as to be of inestimable 
value to them. We take the young hobbledehoy 
farm-hand or mechanic, ignorant, mannerless, 
uncleanly as he may be, and turn him out at 
the end of three years with his regiment, self- 
respedling and well-mannered, with habits of 
cleanliness and obedience, having acquired a 
bearing, and a love of order that will cling to 
and serve him all his life. We do not go so 
far," he added, '^as our English neighbors in 
drilling men into superb manikins of 'form' and 
carriage. Our authorities do not consider it neces- 
sary. But we reclaim youths from the sloven- 
liness of their native village or workshop and 
make them tidy and mannerly citizens." 

These remarks came to mind the other day 
as I watched a group of New England youths 
lounging on the steps of the village store, or 
sitting in rows on a neighboring fence, until I 
longed to try if even a judicial arrangement of 

[51 ] 



WOT^LT>Lr W^rS & "BTTV^^rS 

tacks, 'business-end up/ on these favorite seats 
would infuse any energy into their movements. 
I came to the conclusion that my French ac- 
quaintance was right, for the only trim-looking 
men to be seen, were either veterans of our war 
or youths belonging to the local militia. And 
nowhere does one see finer specimens of human- 
ity than West Point and Annapolis turn out. 

If any one doubts what kind of men slouching 
youths develop into, let him look when he trav- 
els, at the dejedled appearance of the farmhouses 
throughout our land. Surely our rural popula- 
tions are not so much poorer than those of other 
countries. Yet when one compares the dreary 
homes of even our well-to-do farmers with the 
smiling, well-kept hamlets seen in England or 
on the Continent, such would seem to be the 
case. 

If ours were an old and bankrupt nation, this 
air of discouragement and decay could not be 
greater. Outside of the big cities one looks in vain 
for some sign of American dash and enterprise 
in the appearance of our men and their homes. 

During a journey of over four thousand miles, 
made last spring as the guest of a gentleman who 
knows our country thoroughly, I was impressed 
most painfully with this abjed: air. Never in all 
those days did we see a fruit-tree trained on some 
sunny southern wall, a smiling flower-garden or 
carefully clipped hedge. My host told me that 
hardly the necessary vegetables are grown, the 

[5^] 



S LOUCH 

inhabitants of the West and South preferring 
canned food. It is less trouble! 

If you wish to form an idea of the extent to 
which slouch prevails in our country, try to 
start a "village improvement society/' and ex- 
perience, as others have done, the apathy and 
ill-will of the inhabitants when you go about 
among them and strive to summon some of their 
local pride to your aid. 

In the town near which I pass my summers, 
a large stone, fallen from a passing dray, lay for 
days in the middle of the principal street, until 
I paid some boys to remove it. No one cared, 
and the dull-eyed inhabitants would doubtless 
be looking at it still but for my impatience. 

One would imagine the villagers were all on 
the point of moving away (and they generally 
are, if they can sell their land), so little interest 
do they show in your plans. Like all people who 
have fallen into bad habits, they have grown to 
love their slatternly ways and cling to them, 
resenting furiously any attempt to shake them 
up to energy and reform. 

The farmer has not, however, a monopoly. 
Slouch seems ubiquitous. Our railway and steam- 
boat systems have tried in vain to combat it, and 
supplied their employees with a livery (I beg 
the free and independent voter's pardon, a uni- 
form!), with but little effedl. The inherent ten- 
dency is too strong for the corporations. The 
condudlors still shuffle along in their spotted 

iS2 ] 



wo%^LT>Lr wj:rs & "btif^ts 

garments, the cap on the back of the head, and 
their legs anywhere, while they chew gum in de- 
fiance of the whole Board of Directors. 

Go down to Washington, after a visit to the 
Flouses of Parliament or the Chamber of Depu- 
ties, and observe the contrast between the bearing 
of our Senators and Representatives and theairof 
their confreres abroad. Our law-makers seem try- 
ing to avoid every appearance of "smartness." 
Indeed, I am told, so great is the prejudice in 
the United States against a well-turned-out man 
that a candidate would seriously compromise 
his chances of eledion who appeared before his 
constituents in other than the accustomed shabby 
frock-coat, unbuttoned and floating, a pot hat, 
no gloves, as much doubtfully white shirt-front 
as possible, and a wisp of black silk for a tie; 
and if he can exhibit also a chin-whisker, his 
chances of eledlion are materially increased. 

Nothing offends an eye accustomed to our 
native laisser aller so much as a well-brushed hat 
and shining boots. When abroad, it is easy to spot 
a compatriot as soon and as far as you can see one, 
by his graceless gait, a cross between a lounge 
and a shuffle. In reading-, or dining-room, he is 
the only man whose spine does not seem equal 
to its work, so he flops and straggles until, for 
the honor of your land, you long to shake him 
and set him squarely on his legs. 

No amount of reasoning can convince me that 
outward slovenliness is not a sign of inward and 

[ 54] 



S LOUCH 

moral supineness. A neglected exterior generally 
means a lax moral code. The man who considers 
it too much trouble to sit ered: can hardly have 
given much time to his tub or his toilet. Having 
negledted his clothes, he will negled: his manners, 
and between morals and manners we know the 
tie is intimate. 

In the Orient a new reign is often inaugurated 
by the construction of a mosque. Vast expense 
is incurred to make it as splendid as possible. 
But, once completed, it is never touched again. 
Others are built by succeeding sovereigns, but 
neither thought nor treasure is ever expended on 
the old ones. When they can no longer be used, 
they are abandoned, and fall into decay. The 
same system seems to prevail among our private 
owners and corporations. Streets are paved, lamp- 
posts eredied, store-fronts carefully adorned, but 
from the hour the workman puts his finishing 
touch upon them they are abandoned to the 
hand of fate. The mud may cake up knee-deep, 
wind and weather work their own sweet will, it 
is no one's business to interfere. 

When abroad one of my amusements has 
been of an early morning to watch Paris making 
its toilet. The streets are taking a bath, liveried 
attendants are blacking the boots of the lamp- 
posts and newspaper-^i(?j"^^^j', the shop-fronts are 
being shaved and having their hair curled, cafes 
and restaurants are putting on clean shirts and 
tying their cravats smartly before their many mir- 

[55] 



rors. By the time the world is up and about, the 
whole city, smiling freshly from its matutinal 
tub, is ready to greet it gayly. 

It is this attention to detail that gives to Con- 
tinental cities their air of cheerfulness and thrift, 
and the utter lack of it that impresses foreigners 
so painfully on arriving at our shores. 

It has been the fashion to laugh at the dude 
and his high collar, at the darky in his master's 
cast-off clothes, aping style and fashion. Better 
the dude, better the colored dandy, better even 
the Bowery "tough" with his affected carriage, 
for they at least are reaching blindly out after 
something better than their surroundings, striv- 
ing after an ideal, and are in just so much the 
superiors of the foolish souls who mock them — 
better, even misguided efforts, than the ignoble 
stagnant quagmire of slouch into which we seem 
to be slowly descending. 



[56] 



Social Suggestion 



THE question of how far we are un- 
consciously influenced by people and 
surroundings, in our likes and dislikes, 
our opinions, and even in our pleasures and in- 
timate tastes, is a delicate and interesting one, 
for the line between success and failure in the 
world, as on the stage or in most of the pro- 
fessions, is so narrow and depends so often on 
what humor one's "public*' happen to be in at 
a particular moment, that the subjed: is worthy 
of consideration. 

Has it never happened to you, for instance, 
to dine with friends and go afterwards in a jolly 
humor to the play which proved so delightful 
that you insist on taking your family immedi- 
ately to see it; when to your astonishment you 
discover that it is neither clever nor amusing, 
on the contrary rather dull. Your family look 
at you in amazement and wonder what you had 
seen to admire in such an asinine performance. 
There was a case of suggestion! You had been 
influenced by your friends and had shared their 
opinions. The same thing occurs on a higher 
scale when one is raised out of one's self by 
association with gifted and original people, a 
communion with more cultivated natures which 
causes you to discover and appreciate a thou- 

[57] 



sand hidden beauties in literature, art or music 
that left to yourself, you would have failed to 
notice. Under these circumstances you will often 
be astonished at the point and piquancy of your 
own conversation. This is but too true of a num- 
ber of subjeds. 

We fondly believe our opinions and convic- 
tions to be original, and with innocent conceit, 
imagine that we have formed them for ourselves. 
The illusion of being unlike other people is a 
common vanity. Beware of the man who asserts 
such a claim. He is sure to be a bore and will 
serve up to you, as his own, a muddle of ideas 
and opinions which he has absorbed like a sponge 
from his surroundings. 

No place is more propitious for studying this 
curious phenomenon, than behind the scenes of 
a theatre, the last few nights before a first per- 
formance. The whole company is keyed up to a 
point of mutual admiration that they are far from 
feeling generally. "The piece is charming and 
sure to be a success." The author and the inter- 
preters of his thoughts are in complete commun- 
ion. The first night comes. The piece is a failure ! 
Drop into the greenroom then and you will 
find an astonishing change has taken place. The 
Star will take you into a corner and assert that, 
she "always knew the thing could not go, it was 
too imbecile, with such a company, it was folly 
to exped: anything else.'* The author will abuse 
the Star and the management. The whole troupe 

[5»] 



SOCIAL SUGGESTIOO^ 

is frankly disconcerted, like people aroused out 
of a hypnotic sleep, wondering what they had 
seen in the play to admire. 

In the social world we are even more incon- 
sistent, accepting with tameness the most aston- 
ishing theories and opinions. Whole circles will 
go on assuring each other how clever Miss So- 
and-So is, or,, how beautiful they think someone 
else. Not because these good people are any 
cleverer, or more attradlive than their neighbors, 
but simply because it is in the air to have these 
opinions about them. To such an extent does 
this hold good, that certain persons are privi- 
leged to be vulgar and rude, to say impertinent 
things and make remarks that would ostracize a 
less fortunate individual from the polite world 
for ever; society will only smilingly shrug its 
shoulders and say: "It is only Mr. So-and-So's 
way." It is useless to assert that in cases like 
these, people are in possession of their normal 
senses. They are under influences of which they 
are perfectly unconscious. 

Have you ever seen a piece guyed? Few 
sadder sights exist, the human being rarely get- 
ting nearer the brute than when engaged in this 
amusement. Nothing the a6tor or ac^tress can do 
will satisfy the public. Men who under ordi- 
nary circumstances would be incapable of in- 
sulting a woman, will whistle and stamp and 
laugh, at an unfortunate girl who is doing her 
utmost to amuse them. A terrible example of 

[59] 



WOT^L'DLr W^rS ^ "BYWAYS 

this was given two winters ago at one of our 
concert halls, when a family of Western singers 
were subjeded to absolute ill-treatment at the 
hands of the public. The young girls were per- 
fe6tly sincere, in their rude way, but this did 
not prevent men from oifering them every in- 
sult malice could devise, and making them a 
target for every missile at hand. So little does the 
public think for itself in cases like this, that at 
the opening of the performance had some well- 
known person given the signal for applause, the 
whole audience would, in all probability, have 
been delighted and made the wretched sisters a 
success. 

In my youth it was the fashion to affedl ad- 
miration for the Italian school of painting and 
especially for the great masters of the Renais- 
sance. Whole families of perfectly inartistic 
English and Americans might then be heard 
conscientiously admiring the ceiling of the Sis- 
tine Chapel or Leonardo's Last Supper (Botti- 
celli had not been invented then) in the choicest 
guide-book language. , 

When one considers the infinite knowledge of 
technique required to understand the difficulties 
overcome by the giants of the Renaissance and to 
appreciate the intrinsic qualities of their crea- 
tions, one asks one's self in wonder what our 
parents admired in those paintings, and what 
tempted them to bring home and adorn their 
houses with such dreadful copies of their favorites. 

[60] 



SOCIAL suGGE stio:j^ 

For if they appreciated the originals they never 
would have bought the copies, and if the copies 
pleased them, they must have been incapable 
of enjoying the originals. Yet all these people 
thought themselves perfedlly sincere. To-day 
you will see the same thing going on before the 
paintings of Claude Monet and Besnard, the 
same admiration expressed by people who, you 
feel perfedly sure, do not realize why these works 
of art are superior and can no more explain to 
you why they think as they do than the sheep 
that follow each other through a hole in a wall, 
can give a reason for their adlions. 

Dress and fashion in clothes are subjedls 
above all others, where the ineptitude of the 
human mind is most evident. Can it be ex- 
plained in any other way, why the fashions of 
yesterday always appear so hideous to us, — al- 
most grotesque? Take up an old album of pho- 
tographs and glance over the faded contents. 
Was there ever anything so absurd? Look at 
the top hats men wore, and at the skirts of the 
women ! 

The mother of a family said to me the other 
day: "When I recall the way in which girls 
were dressed in my youth, I wonder how any 
of us ever got a husband." 

Study a photograph of the Empress Eugenie, 
that supreme arbiter of elegance and grace. 
Oh! those bunchy hooped skirts! That awful 
India shawl pinned off the shoulders, and the 

[6i ] 



bonnet perched on a roll of hair in the nape of 
the neck! What were people thinking of at 
that time? Were they lunatics to deform in 
this way the beautiful lines of the human body 
which it should be the first objedl of toilet to 
enhance, or were they only lacking in the artis- 
tic sense? Nothing of the kind. And what is 
more, they were convinced that the real secret 
of beauty in dress had been discovered by them; 
that past fashions were absurd, and that the fu- 
ture could not improve on their creations. The 
sculptors and painters of that day (men of as 
great talent as any now living), were enthusiastic 
in reproducing those monstrosities in marble or 
on canvas, and authors raved about the ideal grace 
with which a certain beauty draped her shawl. 

Another marked manner in which we are in- 
fluenced by circumambient suggestion, is in the 
transient furore certain games and pastimes 
create. We see intelligent people so given over 
to this influence as barely to allow themselves 
time to eat and sleep, begrudging the hours thus 
stolen from their favorite amusement. 

Ten years ago, tennis occupied every moment 
of our young people's time; now golf has trans- 
planted tennis in public favor, which does not 
prove, however, that the latter is the better 
game, but simply that compelled by the accumu- 
lated force of other people's opinions, youths and 
maidens, old duffers and mature spinsters are 
willing to pass many hours daily in all kinds of 

[62] 



SOCIAL SUGG ESriO 0^ 

weather, solemnly following an indian-rubberball 
across ten-acre lots. 

If you suggest to people who are laboring 
under the illusion they are amusing themselves 
that the game, absorbing so much of their at- 
tention, is not as exciting as tennis nor as clever 
in combinations as croquet, that in fad: it would 
be quite as amusing to roll an empty barrel 
several times around a plowed field, they laugh 
at you in derision and instantly put you down 
in their profound minds as a man who does not 
understand "sport." 

Yet these very people were tennis-mad twenty 
years ago and had night come to interrupt a game 
of croquet would have ordered lanterns lighted 
in order to finish the match so enthralling were 
its intricacies. 

Everybody has known how to play Bezique 
in this country for years, yet within the last 
eighteen months, whole circles of our friends 
have been seized with a midsummer madness 
and willingly sat glued to a card-table through 
long hot afternoons and again after dinner until 
day dawned on their folly. 

Certain Memoires of Louis Fifteenth's reign 
tell of an "unravelling" mania that developed at 
his court. It began by some people fraying out 
old silks to obtain the gold and silver threads 
from worn-out stuffs; this occupation soon 
became the rage, nothing could restrain the de- 
lirium of destrudtion, great ladies tore priceless 

[63 ] 



tapestries from their walls and brocades from 
their furniture, in order to unravel those materi- 
als and as the old stock did not suffice for the 
demand thousands were spent on new brocades 
and velvets, which were instantly destroyed, 
entertainments were given where unravelling 
was the only amusement oifered, the entire 
court thinking and talking of nothing else for 
months. 

What is the logical dedudion to be drawn 
from all this? Simply that people do not see 
with their eyes or judge with their understand- 
ings; that an all-pervading hypnotism, an am- 
bient suggestion, at times envelops us taking 
from people all free will, and replacing it with 
the taste and judgment of the moment. 

The number of people is small in each genera- 
tion, who are strong enough to rise above their 
surroundings and think for themselves. The rest 
are as dry leaves on a stream. They float along 
and turn gayly in the eddies, convinced all the 
time (as perhaps are the leaves) that they acfl 
entirely from their own volition and that their 
movements are having a profound influence on 
the diredion and force of the current. 



[64] 



Bohemia 



LUNCHING with a talented English 
comedian and his wife the other day, 
the conversation turned on Bohemia, 
the evasive no-man's-land that Thackeray re- 
ferred to, in so many of his books, and to which 
he looked back lovingly in his later years, when, 
as he said, he had forgotten the road to Prague. 
The lady remarked: "People have been more 
than kind to us here in New York. We have 
dined and supped out constantly, and have met 
with gracious kindness, such as we can never for- 
get. But so far we have not met a single painter, 
or author, or sculptor, or a man who has ex- 
plored a corner of the earth. Neither have we 
had the good luck to find ourselves in the same 
room with Tesla or Rehan, Edison or Drew. We 
shall regret so much when back in England and 
are asked about your people of talent, being 
obliged to say, 'We never met any of them.' 
Why is it? We have not been in any one circle, 
and have pitched our tents in many cities, dur- 
ing our tours over here, but always with the same 
result. We read your American authors as much 
as, if not more than, our own. The names of 
dozens of your discoverers and painters are house- 
hold words in England. When my husband 
planned his first tour over here my one idea was, 

[65] 



' How nice it will be ! Now I shall meet those de- 
lightful people of whom I have heard so much.* 
The disappointment has been complete. Never 
one have I seen." 

I could not but feel how all too true were the 
remarks of this intelligent visitor, remembering 
how quick the society of London is to welcome 
a new celebrity or original charadter, how a place 
is at once made for him at every hospitable 
board, a permanent one to which he is expelled 
to return; and how no Continental entertain- 
ment is considered complete without some bright 
particular star to shine in the firmament. 

"Lion-hunting/' I hear my reader say with 
a sneer. That may be, but it makes society worth 
the candle, which it rarely is over here. I realized 
what I had often vaguely felt before, that the 
Bohemia the English lady was looking for was 
not to be found in this country, morels the pity. 
Not that the elements are lacking. Far from it, 
(for even more than in London should we be able 
to combine such a society), but perhaps from a 
misconception of the true idea of such a society, 
due probably to Henry Murger*s dreary book 
Scenes de la vie de Boheme which is chargeable with 
the fad that a circle of this kind evokes in the 
mind of most Americans visions of a scrubby, 
poorly-fed and less-washed community, a world 
they would hardly dare ask to their tables for fear 
of some embarrassing unconventionality of con- 
dud or dress. 

[66] 



"BOHEMIA 



Yet that can hardly be the reason, for even in 
Murger or Paul de Kock, at their worst, the hero 
is still a gentleman, and even when he borrows 
a friend's coat, it is to go to a great house and 
among people of rank. Besides, we are becoming 
too cosmopolitan, and wander too constantly 
over this little globe, not to have learned that 
the Bohemia of 1830 is as completely a thing of 
the past as a grisette or a glyphisodon. It dis- 
appeared with Gavarni and the authors who 
described it. Although we have kept the word, 
its meaning has gradually changed until it has 
come to mean something difficult to define, a 
will-o'-the-wisp, which one tries vainly to grasp. 
With each decade it has put on a new form and 
changed its centre, the one definite fa6t being 
that it combines the better elements of several 
social layers. 

Drop in, if you are in Paris and know the way, 
at one of Madeleine Lemaire's informal even- 
ings in her studio. There you may find the Prince 
de Ligne, chatting with Rejane or Coquelin; 
or Henri d'Orleans, just back from an expedition 
into Africa. A little further on, Saint-Saens will 
be running over the keys, preparing an accom- 
paniment for one of Madame deTredern's songs. 
The Princess Mathilde (that passionate lover of 
art) will surely be there, and — but it is needless 
to particularize. 

Cross the Channel, and get yourself asked to 
one of Irving's choice suppers after the play. 

[67] 



You will find the bar, the stage, and the pulpit 
represented there, a "happy family** over which 
the "Prince'* often presides, smoking cigar after 
cigar, until the tardy London daylight appears 
to break up the entertainment. 

For both are centres where the gifted and the 
travelled meet the great of the social world, on 
a footing of perfed: equality, and where, if any 
prestige is accorded, it is that of brains. When 
you have seen these places and a dozen others 
like them, you will realize what the ad:or*s wife 
had in her mind. 

Now, let me whisper to you why I think such 
circles do not exist in this country. In the first 
place, we are still too provincial in this big city 
of ours. New York always reminds me of a defi- 
nition I once heard of California fruit: "Very 
large, with no particular flavor." We are like a 
boy, who has had the misfortune to grow too 
quickly and look like a man, but whose mind has 
not kept pace with his body. What he knows is 
undigested and chaotic, while his appearance 
makes you exped: more of him than he can 
give — hence disappointment. 

Our society is yet in knickerbockers, and has 
retained all sorts of littlenesses and prejudices 
which older civilizations have long since rele- 
gated to the mental lumber room. An equivalent 
to this point of view you will find in England 
or France only in the smaller "cathedral" cities, 
and even there the old aristocrats have the cour- 

[68 ] 



"BOHE m I^ 



age of their opinions. Here, where everything is 
quite frankly on a money basis, and "positions" 
are made and lost like a fortune, by a turn of the 
market, those qualities vv^hich are purely men- 
tal, and on which it is hard to put a practical 
value, are naturally at a discount. We are quite 
ready to pay for the best. Witness our private 
galleries and the opera, but we say, like the par- 
venu in Emile Augier^s delightful comedy Le 
Gendre de M. Poirier^ "Patronize art? Of course ! 
But the artists? Never! " And frankly, it would 
be too much, would it not, to exped: a family 
only half a generation away from an iron foundry, 
or a mine, to be willing to receive Irving or 
Bernhardt on terms of perfed: equality? 

As it would be unjust to demand a mature 
mind in the overgrown boy, it is useless to hope 
for delicate ta6t and social feeling from the par- 
venu. To be gracious and at ease with all classes 
and professions, one must be perfedly sure of 
one's own position, and with us few feel this 
security, it being based on too frail a foundation, 
a crisis in the " street" going a long way towards 
destroying it. 

Of course I am generalizing and doubt not 
that in many cultivated homes the right spirit 
exists, but unfortunately these are not the centres 
which give the tone to our "world." Lately at 
one of the most splendid houses in this city a 
young Italian tenor had been engaged to sing. 
When he had finished he stood alone, unno- 

[69] 



ticed, unspoken to for the rest of the evening. 
He had been paid to sing. "What more, in 
common sense, could he want?" thought the 
"world," without refledling that it was probably 
not the tenor who lost by that arrangement. It 
needs a delicate hand to hold the reins over the 
backs of such a fine-mouthed community as 
artists and singers form. They rarely give their 
best when singing or performing in a hostile at- 
mosphere. 

A few years ago when a fancy-dress ball was 
given at the Academy of Design, the original 
idea was to have it an artists* ball; the commu- 
nity of the brush were, however, approached with 
such a complete lack of tad that, with hardly 
an exception, they held aloof, and at the ball 
shone conspicuous by their absence. 

At present in this city I know of but two hos- 
pitable firesides where you are sure to meet the 
best the city holds of either foreign or native 
talent. The one is presided over by the wife of a 
young composer, and the other, oddly enough, 
by two unmarried ladies. An invitation to a 
dinner or a supper at either of these houses is 
as eagerly sought after and as highly prized in 
the great world as it is by the Bohemians, though 
neither "salon" is open regularly. 

There is still hope for us, and I already see 
signs of better things. Perhaps, when my English 
friend returns in a few years, we may be able to 
prove to her that we have found the road to 
Prague. [ 70 ] 



Stfe ji^ki^ jy^kiL jti^lyi^ jj^kiLJii^kiL Ji^kiLJii^k^ jy^ki^ ji^^ ^k^ ^ 

*I^^»^T|» *n^"*n» »MV»»tI» •l^.^n* «l^»WTl» it^m^TT* 't^aWTl^ «T^.a^7TS7|^,^Tl«3nS.a^T* <T^^TC 

iV^- II 

Social Exiles 



BALZAC, in his Come die Humaine^ has re- 
viewed with a master-hand almost every 
phase of the Social World of Paris down 
to 1850 and Thackeray left hardly a corner of 
London High Life unexplored; but so great 
have been the changes (progress, its admirers 
call it,) since then, that, could Balzac come back 
to his beloved Paris, he would feel like a for- 
eigner there; and Thackeray, who was among 
us but yesterday, would have difficulty in find- 
ing his bearings in the sea of the London world 
of to-day. 

We have changed so radically that even a 
casual observer cannot help being struck by the 
difference. Among other most significant "phe- 
nomena'' has appeared a phase of life that not 
only neither of these great men observed (for 
the very good reason that it had not appeared 
in their time), but which seems also to have es- 
caped the notice of the writers of our own day, 
close observers as they are of any new develop- 
ment. I mean the class of Social Exiles, pitiable 
wanderers from home and country, who haunt 
the Continent, and are to be found (sad little 
colonies) in out-of-the-way corners of almost 
every civilized country. 

[71] 



WO'R^LT>Lr W^rS & "BTJV^rS 

To know much of this form of modern life, 
one must have been a wanderer, hke myself, 
and have pitched his tent in many queer places; 
for they are shy game and not easily raised, fre- 
quenting mostly quiet old cities like Versailles 
and Florence, or inexpensive watering-places 
where their meagre incomes become affluence 
by contrast. The first thought on dropping in 
on such a settlement is, "How in the world 
did these people ever drift here?" It is simple 
enough and generally comes about in this way : 

The father of a wealthy family dies. The for- 
tune turns out to be less than was expeded. 
The widow and children decide to go abroad 
for a year or so, during their period of mourn- 
ing, partially for distraction, and partially (a fa6t 
which is not spoken of) because at home they 
would be forced to change their way of living to 
a simpler one, and that is hard to do, just at 
first. Later they think it will be quite easy. So 
the family emigrates, and after a little sight-see- 
ing, settles in Dresden or Tours, casually at first, 
in a hotel. If there are young children they are 
made the excuse. "The languages are so impor- 
tant!" Or else one of the daughters develops a 
taste for music, or a son takes up the study of 
art. In a year or two, before a furnished apart- 
ment is taken, the idea of returning is discussed, 
but abandoned "for the present." They begin 
vaguely to realize how difficult it will be to 
take life up again at home. During all this time 



SOCIAL EXILES 



their income (like everything else when the 
owners are absent) has been slowly but surely 
disappearing, making the return each year more 
difficult. Finally, for economy, an unfurnished 
apartment is taken. They send home for bits of 
furniture and family belongings, and gradually 
drop into the great army of the expatriated. 

Oh, the pathos of it! One who has not seen 
these poor stranded waifs in their self-imposed 
exile, with eyes turned towards their native land, 
cannot realize all the sadness and loneliness they 
endure, rarely adopting the country of their 
residence but becoming more firmly American 
as the years go by. The home papers and peri- 
odicals are taken, the American church attended, 
if there happens to be one; the English chapel, 
if there is not. Never a French church! In their 
hearts they think it almost irreverent to read 
the service in French. The acquaintance of a 
few fellow-exiles is made and that of a half-dozen 
English families, mothers and daughters and a 
younger son or two, whom the ferocious primo- 
geniture custom has cast out of the homes of 
their childhood to economize on the Conti- 
nent. 

I have in my mind a little settlement of this 
kind at Versailles, which was a type. The formal 
old city, fallen from its grandeur, was a singu- 
larly appropriate setting to the little comedy. 
There the modest purses of the exiles found 
rents within their reach, the quarters vast and 

[73 ] 



IV0%^LT>LY W^YS ^ "BTW^TS 

airy. The galleries and the park afforded a diver- 
sion, and then Paris, dear Paris, the American 
Mecca, was within reach. At the time I knew 
it, the colony was fairly prosperous, many of its 
members living in the two or three principal 
pensions^ the others in apartments of their own. 
They gave feeble little entertainments among 
themselves, card-parties and teas, and dined 
about with each other at their respective tables 
d'hote^ even knowing a stray Frenchman or 
two, whom the quest of a meal had tempted 
out of their native fastnesses as it does the wolves 
in a hard winter. Writing and receiving letters 
from America was one of the principal occupa- 
tions, and an epistle descriptive of a particular 
event at home went the rounds, and was eagerly 
read and discussed. 

The merits of the (^i^trtnt pensions 2i\so formed 
a subject of vital interest. The advantages and 
disadvantages of these rival establishments were, 
as a topic, never exhausted. Madame une telle 
gave five o'clock tea, included in the seven francs 
a day, but her rival gave one more meat course 
at dinner and her coffee was certainly better, while 
a third undoubtedly had a nicer set of people. 
No one here at home can realize the importance 
these matters gradually assume in the eyes of 
the exiles. Their slender incomes have to be so 
carefully handled to meet the strain of even this 
simple way of living, if they are to show a sur- 
plus for a little trip to the seashore in the sum- 

[74] 



SOCIAL EXILES 



mer months, that an extra franc a day becomes 
a serious consideration. 

Every now and then a family stronger-minded 
than the others, or with serious reasons for re- 
turning home (a daughter to bring out or a son 
to put into business), would break away from 
its somnolent surroundings and re-cross the 
Atlantic, alternating between hope and fear. It is 
here that a sad fate awaits these modern Rip Van 
Winkles. They find their native cities changed 
beyond recognition. (For we move fast in these 
days.) The mother gets out her visiting list of 
ten years before and is thunderstruck to find 
that it contains chiefly names of the "dead, the 
divorced, and defaulted." The waves of a decade 
have washed over her place and the world she 
once belonged to knows her no more. The lead- 
ers of her day on whose aid she counted have 
retired from the fray. Younger, and alas! un- 
known faces sit in the opera boxes and around 
the dinner tables where before she had found 
only friends. After a feeble little struggle to get 
again into the " swim,' ' the family drifts back across 
the ocean into the quiet back water of a con- 
tinental town, and goes circling around with the 
other twigs and dry leaves, moral flotsam and 
jetsam, thrown aside by the great rush of the 
outside world. 

For the parents the life is not too sad. They 
have had their day, and are, perhaps, a little glad 
in their hearts of a quiet old age, away from the 

[75] 



heat and sweat of the battle; but for the younger 
generation it is annihilation. Each year their cir- 
cle grows smaller. Death takes away one mem- 
ber after another of the family, until one is left 
alone in a foreign land with no ties around her, 
or with her far-away "home," the latter more a 
name now than a reality. 

A year or two ago I was taking luncheon with 
our consul at his primitive villa, an hour's ride 
from the city of Tangier, a ride made on don- 
key-back, as no roads exist in that sunny land. 
After our coffee and cigars, he took me a half- 
hour's walk into the wilderness around him to 
call on his nearest neighbors, whose mode of 
existence seemed a source of anxiety to him. I 
found myself in the presence of two American 
ladies, the younger being certainly not less than 
seventy-five. To my astonishment I found they 
had been living there some thirty years, since the 
death of their parents, in an isolation and remote- 
ness impossible to describe, in an Arab house, 
with native servants, "the world forgetting, by 
the world forgot." Yet these ladies had names 
well known in New York fifty years ago. 

The glimpse I had of their existence made me 
thoughtful as I rode home in the twilight, across 
a suburb none too safe for strangers. What had 
the future in store for those two? Or, worse still, 
for the survivor of those two? In contrast, I saw 
a certain humble "home" far away in America, 
where two old ladies were ending their lives 

[ 76] 



SOCIAL EXILES 



surrounded by loving friends and relations, hon- 
ored and cherished and guarded tenderly from 
the rude world. 

In big cities like Paris and Rome there is an- 
other class of the expatriated, the wealthy who 
have left their homes in a moment of pique after 
the failure of some social or political ambition; 
and who find in these centres the recognition 
refused them at home and for which their souls 
thirsted. 

It is not to these I refer, although it is curious 
to see a group of people living for years in a coun- 
try of which they, half the time, do not speak 
the language (beyond the necessities of house- 
keeping and shopping), knowing but few of its 
inhabitants, and seeing none of the society of 
the place, their acquaintance rarely going beyond 
that equivocal, hybrid class that surrounds rich 
"strangers" and hangs on to the outer edge of 
the grand monde. One feels for this latter class 
merely contempt, but one's pity is reserved for 
the former. What objedt lessons some lives on 
the Continent would be to impatient souls at 
home, who feel discontented with their surround- 
ings, and anxious to break away and wander 
abroad! Let them think twice before they cut 
the thousand ties it has taken a lifetime to form. 
Better monotony at your own fireside, my friends, 
where at the worst, you are known and have 
your place, no matter how small, than an old 
age among strangers. 

[77] 



N'- 12 

^^Seven Ages'' of Furniture 



THE progress through life of adive- 
minded Americans is apt to be a series 
of transformations. At each succeeding 
phase of mental development, an old skin drops 
from their growing intelligence, and they assimi- 
late the ideas and tastes of their new condition, 
with a facility and completeness unknown to 
other nations. 

One series of metamorphoses particularly 
amusing to watch is, that of an observant, re- 
ceptive daughter of Uncle Sam who, aided and 
followed (at a distance) by an adoring husband, 
gradually develops her excellent brain, and rises 
through fathoms of self-culture and purblind 
experiment, to the surface of dilettantism and 
connoisseurship. One can generally deted: the 
exad: stage of evolution such a lady has reached 
by the bent of her conversation, the books she 
is reading, and, last but not least, by her ma- 
terial surroundings; no outward and visible signs 
refledling inward and spiritual grace so clearly 
as the objeds people colle6t around them for 
the adornment of their rooms, or the way in 
which those rooms are decorated. 

A few years ago, when a young man and his 
bride set up housekeeping on their own account, 
the "old people" of both families seized the 

[78] 



''SEVEN ^GES'' OF FURNITURE 

opportunity to unload on the beginners (under 
the pretence of helping them along) a quantity 
of furniture and belongings that had (as the 
shopkeepers say) "ceased to please "their original 
owners. The narrow quarters of the tyros are 
encumbered by ungainly sofas and arm-chairs, 
most probably of carved rosewood. Etageres of 
the same lugubrious material grace the corners 
of their tiny drawing-room, the bits of mirror 
inserted between the shelves distorting the im- 
age of the owners into headless or limbless 
phantoms. Half of their little dining-room is 
filled with a black-walnut sideboard, ingeniously 
contrived to take up as much space as possible 
and hold nothing, its graceless top adorned with 
a stages head carved in wood and imitation ant- 
lers. 

The novices in their innocence live contented 
amid their hideous surroundings for a year or 
two, when the wife enters her second epoch, 
which, for want of a better word, we will call 
the Japanese period. The grim furniture gradu- 
ally disappears under a layer of silk and gauze 
draperies, the bare walls blossom with paper 
umbrellas, fans are nailed in groups promiscu- 
ously, wherever an empty space offends her eye. 
Bows of ribbon are attached to every possible 
protuberance of the furniture. Even the table 
service is not spared. I remember dining at a 
house in this stage of its artistic development, 
where the marrow bones that formed one course 

[79] 



of the dinner appeared each with a coquet- 
tish little bow-knot of pink ribbon around its 
neck. 

Once launched on this sea of adornment, the 
housewife soon loses her bearings and decorates 
indiscriminately. Her old evening dresses serve 
to drape the mantelpieces, and she passes every 
spare hour embroidering, braiding, or fringing 
some material to adorn her rooms. At Christmas 
her friends contribute specimens of their handi- 
work to the colledion. 

The view of other houses and other decora- 
tions before long introduces the worm of discon- 
tent into the blossom of our friend's content- 
ment. The fruit of her labors becomes tasteless 
on her lips. As the finances of the family are 
satisfactory, the re-arrangement of the parlor 
floor is (at her suggestion) confided to a firm 
of upholsterers, who make a clean sweep of the 
rosewood and the bow-knots, and retire, after 
some months of labor, leaving the delighted 
wife in possession of a suite of rooms glittering 
with every monstrosity that an imaginative trades- 
man, spurred on by unlimited credit, could devise. 

The wood work of the doors and mantels is 
an intricate puzzle of inlaid woods, the ceilings 
are panelled and painted in complicated designs. 
The "parlor" is provided with a complete set 
of neat, old-gold satin furniture, pufl^ed at its 
angles with peacock-colored plush. 

The monumental folding doors between the 

[ 80] 



''SEVEN ^GES'' OF FURNITURE 

long, narrow rooms are draped with the same 
chaste combination of stuffs. 

The dining-room blazes with a gold and pur- 
ple wall paper, set off by ebonized wood work 
and furniture. The conscientious contradlor has 
neglected no corner. Every square inch of the 
ceilings, walls, and floors has been carved, em- 
bossed, stencilled, or gilded into a bewildering 
monotony. 

The husband, whose affairs are rapidly in- 
creasing on his hands, has no time to attend to 
such insignificant details as house decoration, 
the wife has perfed: confidence in the taste of 
the firm employed. So at the suggestion of the 
latter, and in order to complete the beauty of 
the rooms, a Bouguereau, a Toulmouche and a 
couple of Schreyers are bought, and a number 
of modern French bronzes scattered about on 
the multicolored cabinets. Then, at last, the 
happy owners of all this splendor open their 
doors to the admiration of their friends. 

About the time the peacock plush and the 
gilding begin to show signs of wear and tear, 
rumors of a fresh fashion in decoration float 
across from England, and the new gospel of 
the beautiful according to Clarence Cook is first 
preached to an astonished nation. 

The fortune of our couple continuing to de- 
velop with pleasing rapidity, the building of a 
country house is next decided upon. A friend of 
the husband, who has recently started out as an 

[8i ] 



archite6l, designs them a picturesque residence 
without a straight line on its exterior or a square 
room inside. This house is done up in strid: 
obedience to the teachings of the new sedl. The 
dining-room is made about as cheerful as the 
entrance to a family vault. The rest of the house 
bears a close resemblance to an ecclesiastical junk 
shop. The entrance hall is filled with what ap- 
pears to be a communion table in solid oak, and 
the massive chairs and settees of the parlor 
suggest the withdrawing room of Rowena, 
aesthetic shades of momie-cloth drape deep-set 
windows, where anaemic and disjointed females 
in stained glass pluck conventional roses. 

To each of these successive transitions the hus- 
band has remained obediently and tranquilly in- 
different. He has in his heart considered them all 
equally unfitting and uncomfortable and sighed 
in regretful memory of a deep, old-fashioned 
arm-chair that sheltered his after-dinner naps in 
the early rosewood period. So far he has been 
as clay in the hands of his beloved wife, but the 
anaemic ladies and the communion table are the 
last drop that causes his cup to overflow. He 
revolts and begins to take matters into his own 
hands with the result that the household enters 
its fifth incarnation under his guidance, during 
which everything is painted white and all the 
wall-papers are a vivid scarlet. The family sit 
on bogus Chippendale and eat off blue and white 
china. 

[82] 



^'SEFEN ^GES'' OF FURNITURE 

With the building of their grand new house 
near the park the couple rise together into the 
sixth cycle of their development. Having trav- 
elled and studied the epochs by this time, they 
can tell a Louis XIV. from a Louis XV. room, 
and recognize that mahogany and brass sphinxes 
denote furniture of the Empire. This newly ac- 
quired knowledge is, however, vague and hazy. 
They have no confidence in themselves, so give 
over the fitting of their principal floors to the 
New York branch of a great French house. Lit- 
tle is talked of now but periods, plans, and ele- 
vations. Under the guidance of the French firm, 
they acquire at vast expense, faked reproductions 
as historic furniture. 

The spacious rooms are sticky with new gild- 
ing, and the flowered brocades of the hangings 
and furniture crackle to the touch. The rooms 
were not designed by the architect to receive any 
special kind of "treatment." Immense folding- 
doors unite the salons, and windows open any- 
where. The decorations of the walls have been 
applied like a poultice, regardless of the propor- 
tions of the rooms and the distribution of the 
spaces. 

Building and decorating are, however, the best 
of educations. The husband, freed at last from 
his business occupations, finds in this new study 
an interest and a charm unknown to him before. 
He and his wife are both vaguely disappointed 
when their resplendent mansion is finished, hav- 

[83 ] 



wo%^LT>Lr wj:rs & 'Br^^rs 

ing already outgrown it, and recognize that in 
spite of corred: detail, their costly apartments no 
more resemble the stately and simple salons seen 
abroad than the cabin of a Fall River boat re- 
sembles the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles. The 
humiliating knowledge that they are all wrong 
breaks upon them, as it is doing on hundreds 
of others, at the same time as the desire to know 
more and appreciate better the perfedl produc- 
tions of this art. 

A seventh and last step is before them but 
they know not how to make it. A surer guide 
than the upholsterer is, they know, essential, 
but their library contains nothing to help them. 
Others possess the information they need, yet 
they are ignorant where to turn for what they 
require. 

With singular appropriateness a volume treat- 
ing of this delightful "art'* has this season ap- 
peared at Scribner's. "The Decoration of Houses'* 
is the result of a woman's faultless taste collabo- 
rating with a man's technical knowledge. Its 
mission is to reveal to the hundreds who have 
advanced just far enough to find that they can 
go no farther alone, truths lying concealed be- 
neath the surface. It teaches that consummate 
taste is satisfied only with a perfected simplicity; 
that the facades of a house must be the envelope 
of the rooms within and adapted to them, as 
the rooms are to the habits and requirements of 
them "that dwell therein;" that proportion is 

[84] 



''SEVEN ^GES'' OF FURNITURE 

the backbone of the decorator's art and that su- 
preme elegance is fitness and moderation; and, 
above all, that an attention to architedural prin- 
ciples can alone lead decoration to a perfed: de- 
velopment. 



[85] 



N'' 13 

Our Elite and Public Life 



THE complaint is so often heard, and 
seems so well founded, that there is a 
growing inclination, not only among 
men of social position, but also among our best 
and cleverest citizens, to stand aloof from pub- 
lic life, and this reludance on their part is so 
unfortunate, that one feels impelled to seek 
out the causes where they must lie, beneath the 
surface. At a first glance they are not apparent. 
Why should not the honor of representing one's 
town or locality be as eagerly sought after with 
us as it is by English or French men of posi- 
tion? That such is not the case, however, is evi- 
dent. 

Speaking of this the other evening, over my 
after-dinner coffee, with a high-minded and pub- 
lic-spirited gentleman, who not long ago repre- 
sented our country at a European court, he 
advanced two theories which struck me as being 
well worth repeating, and which seemed to ac- 
count to a certain extent for this curious absti- 
nence. 

As a first and most important cause, he placed 
the fad that neither our national nor (here in 
New York) our state capital coincides with our 
metropolis. In this we differ from England and 
all the continental countries. The result is not 

[86] 



OUI^ ELITE ANT> PUBLIC LIFE 

difficult to perceive. In London, a man of the 
v/orld, a business man, or a great lawyer, who 
represents a locality in Parliament, can fulfil his 
mandate and at the same time lead his usual 
life among his own set. The lawyer or the busi- 
ness man can follow during the day his profes- 
sion, or those affairs on which he depends to 
support his family and his position in the world. 
Then, after dinner (owing to the peculiar hours 
adopted for the sittings of Parliament), he can 
take his place as a law-maker. If he be a Lon- 
don-born man, he in no way changes his way 
of life or that of his family. If, on the contrary, 
he be a county magnate, the change he makes 
is all for the better, as it takes him and his wife 
and daughters up to London, the haven of their 
longings, and the centre of all sorts of social 
dissipations and advancement. 

With us, it is exadlly the contrary. As the 
Distrid: of Columbia eledls no one, everybody 
living in Washington officially is more or less 
expatriated, and the social life it offers is a poor 
substitute for the circle which most families leave 
to go there. 

That, however, is not the most important side 
of the question. Go to any great lawyer of either 
New York or Chicago, and propose sending 
him to Congress or the Senate. His answer is 
sure to be, "I cannot afford it. I know it is an 
honor, but what is to replace the hundred thou- 
sand dollars a year which my profession brings 

[87] 



me in, not to mention that all my pradlice 
would go to pieces during my absence?" Or 
again, "How should I dare to propose to my 
family to leave one of the great centres of the 
country to go and vegetate in a little provincial 
city like Washington? No, indeed! Public life 
is out of the question for me!" 

Does any one suppose England would have 
the class of men she gets in Parliament, if that 
body sat at Bristol? 

Until recently the man who occupied the 
position of Lord Chancellor made thirty thou- 
sand pounds a year by his profession without 
interfering in any way with his public duties, 
and at the present moment a recordership in 
London in no wise prevents private practice. 
Were these gentlemen Americans, they would 
be obliged to renounce all hope of professional 
income in order to serve their country at its 
Capital. 

Let us glance for a moment at the other 
reason. Owing to our laws (doubtless perfectly 
reasonable, and which it is not my intention to 
criticise,) a man must reside in the place he 
represents. Here again we differ from all other con- 
stitutional countries. Unfortunately, our clever 
young men leave the small towns of their birth 
and flock up to the great centres as oflTering 
wider fields for their advancement. In conse- 
quence, the local eledor finds his choice limited 
to what is left — the intelle(5lual skimmed milk, 

[ 88 ] 



0U1{^ ELITE ANT> PUBLIC LIFE 

of which the cream has been carried to New 
York or other big cities. No country can exist 
without a metropolis, and as such a centre by 
a natural law of assimilation absorbs the best 
brains of the country, in other nations it has 
been found to the interests of all parties to send 
down brilliant young men to the "provinces," 
to be, in good time, returned by them to the 
national assemblies. 

As this is not a political article the simple indi- 
cation of these two causes will suffice, without 
entering into the question of their reasonableness 
or of their justice. The social bearing of such a 
condition is here the only side of the question 
under discussion; it is difficult to over-rate the 
influence that a man's family exert over his de- 
cisions. 

Political ambition is exceedingly rare among 
our women of position; when the American hus- 
band is bitten with it, the wife submits to, rather 
than abets, his inclinations. In most cases our 
women are not cosmopolitan enough to enjoy 
being transplanted far away from their friends 
and relations, even to fill positions of import- 
ance and honor. A New York woman of great 
frankness and intelligence, who found herself 
recently in a Western city under these circum- 
stances, said, in answer to a flattering remark 
that "the ladies of the place expeded her to be- 
come their social leader," "I don't see any- 
thing to lead," thus very plainly expressing her 

[89] 



opinion of the situation. It is hardly fair to ex- 
pedt a woman accustomed to the life of New 
York or the foreign capitals, to look forward 
with enthusiasm to a term of years passed in 
Albany, or in Washington. 

In France very much the same state of affairs 
has been reached by quite a different route. The 
aristocracy detest the present government, and 
it is not considered "good form" by them to 
sit in the Chamber of Deputies or to accept any 
but diplomatic positions. They condescend to 
fill the latter because that entails living away 
from their own country, as they feel more at 
ease in foreign courts than at the Republican 
receptions of the Elysee. 

There is a deplorable tendency among our 
self-styled aristocracy to look upon their circle 
as a class apart. They separate themselves more 
each year from the life of the country, and affed: 
to smile at any of their number who honestly 
wish to be of service to the nation. They, like 
the French aristocracy, are perfedly willing, even 
anxious, to fill agreeable diplomatic posts at first- 
class foreign capitals, and are naively astonished 
when their offers of service are not accepted with 
gratitude by the authorities in Washington. But 
let a husband propose to his better half some 
humble position in the machinery of our govern- 
ment, and see what the lady's answer will be. 

The opinion prevails among a large class of 
our wealthy and cultivated people, that to go 

[90] 



0Z7!?(^ ELITE ANT> PUBLIC LIFE 

into public life is to descend to duties beneath 
them. They judge the men who occupy such 
positions with insulting severity, classing them 
in their minds as corrupt and self-seeking, than 
which nothing can be more childish or more im- 
becile. Any observer who has lived in the dif- 
ferent grades of society will quickly renounce the 
puerile idea that sporting or intellectual pursuits 
are alone worthy of a gentleman's attention. This 
very political life, which appears unworthy of 
their attention to so many men, is, in reality, 
the great field where the nations of the world 
fight out their differences, where the seed is sown 
that will ripen later into vast crops of truth and 
justice. It is (if rightly regarded and honestly 
lollowed) the battle-ground where man's highest 
qualities are put to their noblest use — that of 
working for the happiness of others. 



[91 ] 



N'- 14 

The Small Summer Hotel 



WE certainly are the most eccentric race 
on the surface of the globe and ought 
to be a delight to the soul of an ex- 
plorer, so full is our civilization of contradictions, 
unexplained habits and curious customs. It is 
quite unnecessary for the inquisitive gentlemen 
who pass their time prying into other people's 
affairs and then returning home to write books 
about their discoveries, to risk their lives and 
digestions in long journeys into Central Africa 
or to the frozen zones, while so much good ma- 
terial lies ready to their hands in our own land. 
The habits of the "natives" in New England 
alone might 6ccupy an adive mind indefinitely, 
offering as interesting problems as any to be 
solved by penetrating Central Asia or visiting 
the man-eating tribes of Australia. 

Perhaps one of our scientific celebrities, before 
undertaking his next long voyage, will find time 
to make observations at home and colled: sui^- 
cient data to answer some questions that have 
long puzzled my unscientific brain. He would be 
doing good work. Fame and honors await the 
man who can explain why, for instance, sane 
Americans of the better class, with money enough 
to choose their surroundings, should pass so 
much of their time in hotels and boarding houses. 

[92] 



THE SM^LL SVMME%^ HOTEL 

There must be a reason for the vogue of these 
retreats — every adtion has a cause, hov/ever re- 
mote. I shall await with the deepest interest a 
paper on this subjed: from one of our great 
explorers, untoward circumstances having some 
time ago forced me to pass a few days in a pop- 
ular establishment of this class. 

During my visit I amused myself by observ- 
ing the inmates and trying to discover why they 
had come there. So far as I could find out, the 
greater part of them belonged to our well-to-do 
class, and when at home doubtless lived in lux- 
urious houses and were waited on by trained ser- 
vants. In the small summer hotel where I met 
them, they were living in dreary little ten by 
twelve foot rooms, containing only the absolute 
necessities of existence, a wash-stand, a bureau, 
two chairs and a bed. And such a bed! One 
mattress about four inches thick over squeaking 
slats, cotton sheets, so nicely calculated to the 
size of the bed that the slightest move on the 
part of the sleeper would detach them from their 
moorings and undo the housemaid's work; two 
limp, discouraged pillows that had evidently 
been "banting," and a few towels a foot long 
with a surface like sand-paper, completed the 
fittings of the room. Baths were unknown, and 
hot water was a luxury distributed sparingly by 
a capricious handmaiden. It is only fair to add 
that everything in the room was perfedly clean, 
as was the coarse table linen in the dining room. 



The meals were in harmony with the rooms 
and furniture, consisting only of the strid; neces- 
sities, cooked with a Spartan disregard for such 
sybarite foibles, as seasoning or dressing. I be- 
lieve there was a substantial meal somewhere in 
the early morning hours, but I never succeeded 
in getting down in time to inspedt it. By success- 
ful bribery, I induced one of the village belles, 
who served at table, to bring a cup of coffee 
to my room. The first morning it appeared al- 
ready poured out in the cup, with sugar and 
cold milk added at her discretion. At one o'clock 
a dinner was served, consisting of soup (occasion- 
ally), one meat dish and attendant vegetables, a 
meagre dessert, and nothing else. At half-past 
six there was an equally rudimentary meal, called 
"tea," after which no further food was distri- 
buted to the inmates, who all, however, seemed 
perfedtly contented with this arrangement. In 
fad they apparently looked on the ad: of eating 
as a disagreeable task, to be hurried through as 
soon as possible that they might return to their 
aimless rocking and chattering. 

Instead of dinner hour being the feature of 
the day, uniting people around an attradive 
table, and attended by conversation, and the meal 
lasting long enough for one's food to be properly 
eaten, it was rushed through as though we were 
all trying to catch a train. Then, when the meal 
was over, the boarders relapsed into apathy 
again. 

[94] 



THE SM^LL SUMME'E^ HOTEL 

No one ever called this hospitable home a 
boarding-house, for the proprietor was furious 
if it was given that name. He also scorned the 
idea of keeping a hotel. So that I never quite 
understood in what relation he stood toward us. 
He certainly considered himself our host, and 
ignored the financial side of the question severely. 
In order not to hurt his feelings by speaking to 
him of money, we were obliged to get our bills 
by strategy from a male subordinate. Mine host 
and his family were apparently unaware that 
there were people under their roof who paid 
them for board and lodging. We were all looked 
upon as guests and "entertained," and our rights 
impartially ignored. 

Nothing, I find, is so distindtive of New 
England as this graceful veiling of the prad:ical 
side of life. The landlady always reminded me, 
by her manner, of Barriers description of the 
bill-sticker's wife who "cut" her husband when 
she chanced to meet him "professionally" en- 
gaged. As a result of this extreme detachment 
from things material, the house ran itself, or 
was run by incompetent Irish and negro "help." 
There were no bells in the rooms, which sim- 
plified the service, and nothing could be ordered 
out of meal hours. 

The material defedls in board and lodging 
sink, however, into insignificance before the 
moral and social unpleasantness of an estab- 
lishment such as this. All ages, all conditions, 

[95] 



an i all creeds are promiscuously huddled to- 
gether. It is impossible to choose whom one 
shall know or whom avoid. A horrible bur- 
lesque of family life is enabled, with all its in- 
conveniences and none of its sandity. People 
from different cities, with different interests and 
standards, are exped:ed to "chum" together in 
an intimacy that begins with the eight o'clock 
breakfast and ends only when all retire for the 
night. No privacy, no isolation is allowed. If 
you take a book and begin to read in a remote 
corner of a parlor or piazza, some idle matron 
or idiotic girl will tranquilly invade your poor 
little bit of privacy and gabble of her affairs and 
the day's gossip. There is no escape unless you 
mount to your ten-by-twelve cell and sit (like 
the Premiers of England when they visit Bal- 
moral) on the bed, to do your writing, for want 
of any other conveniences. Even such retirement 
is resented by the boarders. You are thought to 
be haughty and to give yourself airs if you do 
not sit for twelve consecutive hours each day in 
unending conversation with them. 

When one refledls that thousands of our 
countrymen pass at least one-half of their lives 
in these asylums, and that thousands more in 
America know no other homes, but move from 
one hotel to another, while the same outlay 
would procure them cosy, cheerful dwellings, it 
does seem as if these modern Arabs, Holmes's 
"Folding Bed-ouins," were gradually returning 

[96] 



THE SM^LL SUMME1{^ HOTEL 



to prehistoric habits and would end by eating 
roots promiscuously in caves. 

The contradidion appears more marked the 
longer one refleds on the love of independence 
and impatience of all restraint that charadlerize 
our race. If such an institution had been con- 
ceived by people of the Old World, accustomed 
to moral slavery and to a thousand petty tyran- 
nies, it would not be so remarkable, but that 
we, of all the races of the earth, should have 
created a form of torture unknown to Louis XI. 
or to the Spanish Inquisitors, is indeed inexpli- 
cable! Outside of this happy land the institution 
is unknown. The pension when it exists abroad, 
is only an exotic growth for an American market. 
Among European nations it is undreamed of; 
the poorest when they travel take furnished 
rooms, where they are served in private, or go 
to restaurants or table d'hotes for their meals. 
In a stridly continental hotel the public parlor 
does not exist. People do not travel to make 
acquaintances, but for health or recreation, or to 
improve their minds. The enforced intimacy of 
our American family house, with its attendant 
quarrelling and back-biting, is an inflidion of 
which Europeans are in happy ignorance. 

One explanation, only, occurs to me, which is 
that among New England people, largely de- 
scended from Puritan stock, there still lingers 
some blind impulse at self-mortification, an 
hereditary inclination to make this life as dis- 

[97] 



agreeable as possible by self-immolation. Their 
ancestors, we are told by Macaulay, suppressed 
bull baiting, not because it hurt the bull, but 
because it gave pleasure to the people. Here in 
New England they refused the Roman dogma 
of Purgatory and then with complete inconsist- 
ency, invented the boarding-house, in order, 
doubtless, to take as much of the joy as possible 
out of this life, as a preparation for endless bliss 
in the next. 



[98] 



N^' 15 

A False Start 



HAVING had, during a wandering exist- 
ence, many opportunities of observing 
my compatriots away from home and 
familiar surroundings, in various circles of cos- 
mopolitan society, at foreign courts, in diplo- 
matic life, or unofficial capacities, I am forced to 
acknowledge that whereas my countrywoman 
invariably assumed her new position with grace 
and dignity, my countryman, in the majority of 
cases, appeared at a disadvantage. 

I take particular pleasure in making this tri- 
bute to my "sisters'" tad and wit, as I have 
been accused of being "hard" on American wo- 
men, and some half-humorous criticisms have 
been taken seriously by over-susceptible wo- 
men — doubtless troubled with guilty consciences 
for nothing is more exadl than the old French 
proverb, "It is only the truth that wounds." 

The fad: remains clear, however, that Ameri- 
can men, as regards polish, facility in expressing 
themselves in foreign languages, the arts of 
pleasing and entertaining, in short, the thousand 
and one nothings composing that agreeable 
whole, a cultivated member of society, are infe- 
rior to their womenkind. I feel sure that all 
Americans who have travelled and have seen 
their compatriot in his social relations with for- 

[99] 



eigners, will agree with this, reludtant as I am to 
acknowledge it. 

That a sister and brother brought up together, 
under the same influences, should later difi^er to 
this extent seems incredible. It is just this that 
convinces me we have made a false start as re- 
gards the education and ambitions of our young 
men. 

To find the reasons one has only to glance 
back at our past. After the struggle that insured 
our existence as a united nation, came a period 
of great prosperity. When both seemed secure, 
we did not pause and take breath, as it were, 
before entering a new epoch of development, 
but dashed ahead on the old lines. It is here that 
we got on the wrong road. Naturally enough too, 
for our peculiar position on this continent, far 
away from the centres of cultivation and art, 
surrounded only by less successful states with 
which to compare ourselves, has led us into form- 
ing erroneous ideas as to the proportions of 
things, causing us to exaggerate the value of 
material prosperity and undervalue matters of 
infinitely greater importance, which have been 
negledled in consequence. 

A man who, after fighting through our late 
war, had succeeded in amassing a fortune, nat- 
urally wished his son to follow him on the only 
road in which it had ever occurred to him that 
success was of any importance. So beyond giv- 
ing the boy a college education, which he had 

[ loo ] 



e/f F^LSE ST^RT 



not enjoyed, his ambition rarely went; his idea 
being to make a pradtical business man of him, 
or a lawyer, that he could keep the estate to- 
gether more intelligently. In thousands of cases, 
of course, individual taste and bent over-ruled 
this influence, and a career of science or art was 
chosen; but in the mass of the American people, 
it was firmly implanted that the pursuit of 
wealth was the only occupation to which a rea- 
sonable human being could devote himself. A 
young man who was not in some way engaged 
in increasing his income was looked upon as a 
very undesirable member of society, and sure, 
sooner or later, to come to harm. 

Millionaires declined to send their sons to 
college, saying they would get ideas there that 
would unfit them for business, to Paterfamilias 
the one objed of life. Under such fostering influ- 
ences, the ambitions in our country have grad- 
ually given way to money standards and the 
false start has been made ! Leaving aside at once 
the question of money in its relation to our pol- 
itics (although it would be a fruitful subjed for 
moralizing), and confining ourselves stridlly to 
the social side of life, we soon see the results of 
this mammon worship. 

In England (although Englishmen have been 
contemptuously called the shop-keepers of the 
world) the extension and maintenance of their 
vast empire is the mainspring which keeps the 
great machine in movement. And one sees tens 

[ loi ] 



of thousands of well-born and delicately-bred 
men cheerfully entering the many branches of 
public service where the hope of wealth can 
never come, and retiring on pensions or half- 
pay in the strength of their middle age, appar- 
ently without a regret or a thought beyond 
their country's well-being. 

In France, where the passionate love of their 
own land has made colonial extension impossible, 
the modern Frenchman of education is more 
interested in the yearly exhibition at the Salon or 
in a successful play at the Fran^aiSy than in the 
stock markets of the world. 

Would that our young men had either of 
these bents! They have copied from England 
a certain love of sport, without the English 
climate or the calm of country and garrison life, 
to make these sports logical and necessary. As 
the young American millionaire thinks he must 
go on increasing his fortune, we see the anomaly 
of a man working through a summer's day in 
Wall Street, then dashing in a train to some 
suburban club, and appearing a half-hour later 
on the polo field. Next to wealth, sport has be- 
come the ambition of the wealthy classes, and 
has grown so into our college life that the num- 
ber of students in the freshman class of our 
great universities is seriously influenced by that 
institution's losses or gains at football. 

What is the result of all this? A young man 
starts in life with the firm intention of making 

[ 102 ] 



e/f F^LSE ST^RT 



a great deal of money. If he has any time left 
from that occupation he will devote it to sport. 
Later in life, when he has leisure and travels, or 
is otherwise thrown with cultivated strangers, 
he must naturally be at a disadvantage. " Shop/' 
he cannot talk; he knows that is vulgar. Music, 
art, the drama, and literature are closed books 
to him, in spite of the fad: that he may have a 
box on the grand tier at the opera and a couple 
of dozen high-priced "masterpieces" hanging 
around his drawing-rooms. If he is of a finer 
clay than the general run of his class, he will 
realize dimly that somehow the goal has been 
missed in his life race. His chase after the ma- 
terial has left him so little time to cultivate the 
ideal, that he has prepared himself a sad and 
aimless old age; unless he can find pleasure in 
doing as did a man I have been told about, 
who, receiving half a dozen millions from his 
father's estate, conceived the noble idea of in- 
creasing them so that he might leave to each of 
his four children as much as he had himself re- 
ceived. With the strictest economy, and by sup- 
pressing out of his life and that of his children 
all amusements and superfluous outlay, he has 
succeeded now for many years in living on the 
income of his income. Time will never hang 
heavy on this Harpagon's hands. He is a per- 
fedly happy individual, but his conversation is 
hardly of a kind to attrad:,and it may be doubted 
if the rest of the family are as much to be envied. 

[ 103 ] 



An artist who had lived many years of his 
life in Paris and London was speaking the other 
day of a curious phase he had remarked in our 
American life. He had been accustomed over 
there to have his studio the meeting-place of 
friends, who would drop in to smoke and lounge 
away an hour, chatting as he worked. To his 
astonishment, he tells me that since he has been 
in New York not one of the many men he knows 
has ever passed an hour in his rooms. Is not 
that a significant fa6t? Another remark which 
points its own moral was repeated to me re- 
cently. A foreigner visiting here, to whom Ameri- 
can friends were showing the sights of our city, 
exclaimed at last: "You have not pointed out 
to me any celebrities except millionaires. 'Do 
you see that man? he is worth ten millions. 
Look at that house! it cost one million dollars, 
and there are pidures in it worth over three 
million dollars. That trotter cost one hundred 
thousand dollars,' etc." Was he not right? And 
does it not give my reader a shudder to see in 
black and white the phrases that are, neverthe- 
less, so often on our lips? 

This levelling of everything to its cash value 
is so ingrained in us that we are unconscious of 
it, as we are of using slang or local expressions 
until our attention is called to them. I was pres- 
ent once at a farce played in a London theatre, 
where the audience went into roars of laughter 
every time the stage American said, "Why, cer- 

[ 104 ] 



^ F^LSE Sr^RT 



tainly." I was indignant, and began explaining 
to my English friend that we never used such 
an absurd phrase. "Are you sure?" he asked. 
"Why, certainly," I said, and stopped, catching 
the twinkle in his eye. 

It is very much the same thing with money. 
We do not notice how often it slips into the 
conversation. " Out of the fullness of the heart 
the mouth speaketh." Talk to an American of 
a painter and the charm of his work. He will be 
sure to ask, "Do his pictures sell well?" and will 
lose all interest if you say he can't sell them at 
all. As if that had anything to do with it ! 

Remembering the well-known anecdote of 
Schopenhauer and the gold piece which he used 
to put beside his plate at the table d'hote^ where 
he ate, surrounded by the young officers of the 
German army, and which was to be given to the 
poor the first time he heard any conversation 
that was not about promotion or women, I have 
been tempted to try the experiment in our clubs, 
changing the subjeds to stocks and sport, and 
feel confident that my contributions to charity 
would not ruin me. 

All this has had the result of making our men 
dull companions; after dinner, or at a country 
house, if the subjed they love is tabooed, they 
talk of nothing! It is sad for a rich man (un- 
less his mind has remained entirely between the 
leaves of his ledger) to realize that money really 
buys very little, and above a certain amount can 

[ 105] 



give no satisfadion in proportion to its bulk, be- 
yond that delight which comes from a sense of 
possession. Croesus often discovers as he grows 
old that he has negleded to provide himself with 
the only thing that "is a joy for ever" — a cul- 
tivated intelled: — in order to amass a fortune 
that turns to ashes, when he has time to ask of 
it any of the pleasures and resources he fondly 
imagined it would afford him. Like Talleyrand's 
young man who would not learn whist, he finds 
that he has prepared for himself a dreadful old 
age! 



[ io6] 






A Holy Land 



NOT long ago an article came under my 
notice descriptive of the neighborhood 
around Grant's tomb and the calm that 
midsummer brings to that vicinity, laughingly 
referred to as the "Holy Land." 

As careless fingers wandering over the strings 
of a violin may unintentionally strike a chord, 
so the writer of those lines, all unconsciously, 
with a jest, set vibrating a world of tender mem- 
ories and associations; for the region spoken of 
is truly a holy land to me, the playground of 
my youth, and connected with the sweetest ties 
that can bind one's thoughts to the past. 

Ernest Renan in his Souvenirs d'Enfance^ tells 
of a Brittany legend, firmly believed in that wild 
land, of the vanished city of "Is," which ages 
ago disappeared beneath the waves. The peas- 
ants still point out at a certain place on the coast 
the site of the fabled city, and the fishermen 
tell how during great storms they have caught 
glimpses of its belfries and ramparts far down 
between the waves; and assert that on calm 
summer nights they can hear the bells chiming 
up from those depths. I also have a vanished 
"Is" in my heart, and as I grow older, I love to 
listen to the murmurs that float up from the past. 

[ 107 ] 



They seem to come from an infinite distance, 
almost like echoes from another life. 

At that enchanted time we lived during the 
summers in an old wooden house my father had 
re-arranged into a fairly comfortable dwelling. A 
tradition, which no one had ever taken the trouble 
to verify, averred that Washington had once 
lived there, which made that hero very real to 
us. The pidluresque old house stood high on a 
slope where the land rises boldly; with an ad- 
mirable view of distant mountain, river and op- 
posing Palisades. 

The new Riverside drive (which, by the bye, 
should make us very lenient toward the men 
who robbed our city a score of years ago, for 
they left us that vast work in atonement), has 
so changed the neighborhood it is impossible 
now for pious feet to make a pilgrimage to those 
childish shrines. One house, however, still stands 
as when it was our nearest neighbor. It had shel- 
tered General Gage, land for many acres around 
had belonged to him. He was an enthusiastic 
gardener, and imported, among a hundred other 
fruits and plants, the "Queen Claude** plum 
from France, which was successfully acclimated 
on his farm. In New York a plum of that kind 
is still called a "green gage.'* The house has 
changed hands many times since we used to 
play around the Grecian pillars of its portico. 
A recent owner, dissatisfied doubtless with its 
classic simplicity, has painted it a cheerful mus- 

[ '08 ] 



e/f HOLT L^ND 



tard color and crowned it with a fine new Man- 
sard roof. Thus disfigured, and shorn of its 
surrounding trees, the poor old house stands 
blankly by the roadside, reminding one of the 
Greek statue in Anstey's "Painted Venus" after 
the London barber had decorated her to his taste. 
When driving by there now, I close my eyes. 

Another house, where we used to be taken to 
play, was that of Audubon, in the park of that 
name. Many a rainy afternoon I have passed 
with his children choosing our favorite birds in 
the glass cases that filled every nook and corner 
of the tumble-down old place, or turning over 
the leaves of the enormous volumes he would 
so graciously take down from their places for 
our amusement. I often wonder what has be- 
come of those vast in-f olios ^ and if any one 
ever opens them now and admires as v/e did 
the glowing colored plates in which the old or- 
nithologist took such pride. There is something 
infinitely sad in the idea of a colledlion of books 
slowly gathered together at the price of priva- 
tions and sacrifices, cherished, fondled, lovingly 
read, and then at the owner's death, coldly sent 
away to stand for ever unopened on the shelves 
of some public library. It is like negleding poor 
dumb children! 

An event that made a profound impression 
on my childish imagination occurred while my 
father, who was never tired of improving our 
little domain, was cutting a pathway down the 

[ 109 ] 



steep side of the slope to the river. A great 
slab, dislodged by a workman's pick, fell, dis- 
closing the grave of an Indian chief. In a low 
archway or shallow cave sat the skeleton of the 
chieftain, his bows and arrows arranged around 
him on the ground, mingled with fragments of 
an elaborate costume, of which little remained 
but the bead-work. That it was the tomb of a 
man great among his people was evident from 
the care with which the grave had been prepared 
and then hidden, proving how, hundreds of 
years before our civilization, another race had 
chosen this noble cliff and stately river land- 
scape as the fitting framework for a great war- 
rior's tomb. 

This discovery made no little stir in the 
scientific world of that day. Hundreds came to 
see it, and as photography had not then come 
into the world, many drawings were made and 
casts taken, and finally the whole thing was re- 
moved to the rooms of the Historical Society. 
From that day the lonely little path held an 
awful charm for us. Our childish readings of 
Cooper had developed in us that love of the 
Indian and his wild life, so charaderistic of 
boyhood thirty years ago. On still summer af- 
ternoons, the place had a primeval calm that 
froze the young blood in our veins. Although 
we prided ourselves on our quality as "braves," 
and secretly pined to be led on the war-path, we 
were shy of walking in that vicinity in daylight, 



^ HOLT L^ND 



and no power on earth, not even the offer of 
the tomahawk or snow-shoes for which our souls 
longed, would have taken us there at night. 

A place connected in my memory with a 
tragic association was across the river on the 
last southern slope of the Palisades. Here we 
stood breathless while my father told the brief 
story of the duel between Burr and Hamilton, 
and showed us the rock stained by the younger 
man*s life-blood. In those days there was a 
simple iron railing around the spot where 
Hamilton had expired, but of later years I 
have been unable to find any trace of the place. 
The tide of immigration has brought so deep a 
deposit of "saloons" and suburban "balls" that 
the very face of the land is changed, old lovers 
of that shore know it no more. Never were the 
environs of a city so wantonly and recklessly 
degraded. Municipalities have vied with million- 
aires in soiling and debasing the exquisite shores 
of our river, that, thirty years ago, were unri- 
valled the world over. 

The glamour of the past still lies for me upon 
this landscape, in spite of its many defacements. 
The river whispers of boyish boating parties, 
and the woods recall a thousand childish hopes 
and fears, resolute departures to join the pirates, 
or the red men in their strongholds — journeys 
boldly carried out until twilight cooled our cour- 
age and the supper-hour proved a stronger temp- 
tation than war and carnage. 

[ III ] 



When I sat down this summer evening to 
write a few lines about happy days on the banks 
of the Hudson, I hardly realized how sweet 
those memories were to me. The rewriting of 
the old names has evoked from their long sleep 
so many loved faces. Arms seem reaching out 
to me from the past. The house is very still to- 
night. I seem to be nearer my loved dead than 
to the living. The bells of my lost "Is" are 
ringing clear in the silence. 



[ I,.] 



N'' 17 

Royalty at Play 



FEW more amusing sights are to be seen 
in these days, than that of crowned heads 
running away from their dull old courts 
and functions, roughing it in hotels and villas, 
gambling, yachting and playing at being rich 
nobodies. With much intelligence they have all 
chosen the same Republican playground, where 
visits cannot possibly be twisted into meaning 
any new "combination" or political move, thus 
assuring themselves the freedom from care or 
responsibility, that seems to be the aim of their 
existence. Alongside of well-to-do Royalties in 
good paying situations, are those out of a job, 
who are looking about for a "place." One can- 
not take an afternoon's ramble any where between 
Cannes and Mentone without meeting a half- 
dozen of these magnates. 

The other day, in one short walk, I ran across 
three Empresses, two Queens, and an Heir- 
apparent, and then fled to my hotel, fearing to 
be unfitted for America, if I went on "keeping 
such company." They are knowing enough, these 
wandering great ones, and after trying many 
places have hit on this charming coast as offer- 
ing more than any other for their comfort and 
enjoyment. The vogue of these sunny shores 
dates from their annexation to France, — a price 

[ 113 ] 



Vi6lor Emmanuel relud:antly paid for French help 
in his war with Austria. Napoleon III.'s demand 
for Savoy and this littoral, was first made known 
to Vidor Emmanuel at a state ball at Genoa. 
Savoy was his birthplace and his home! The King 
broke into a wild temper, cursing the French 
Emperor and making insulting allusions to his 
parentage, saying he had not one drop of Bona- 
parte blood in his veins. The King's frightened 
courtiers tried to stop this outburst, showing him 
the French Ambassador at his elbow. With a 
superhuman effort Vidlor Emmanuel controlled 
himself, and turning to the Ambassador, said: 

"I fear my tongue ran away with me!" With 
a smile and a bow the great French diplomatist 
remarked : 

^^Sire, I am so deaf I have not heard a word 
your Majesty has been saying!** 

The fashion of coming to the Riviera for 
health or for amusement, dates from the sixties, 
when the Empress of Russia passed a winter at 
Nice, as a last attempt to prolong the existence 
of the dying Tsarewitsch, her son. There also the 
next season the Duke of Edinburgh wooed and 
won her daughter (then the greatest heiress in 
Europe) for his bride. The world moves fast 
and a journey it required a matter of life and 
death to decide on, then, is gayly undertaken 
now, that a prince may race a yacht, or a prin- 
cess try her luck at the gambling tables. When 
one refleds that the "royal caste," in Europe 

[ H4] 



Ror^LTT e/fr PL^r 



alone, numbers some eight hundred people, and 
that the East is beginning to send out its more 
enterprising crowned heads to get a taste of the 
fun, that beyond drawing their salaries, these 
good people have absolutely nothing to do, ex- 
cept to amuse themselves, it is no wonder that 
this happy land is crowded with royal pleasure- 
seekers. 

After a try at Florence and Aix, "the Queen" 
has been faithful to Cimiez, a charming site back 
of Nice. That gay city is always en fete the day 
she arrives, as her carriages pass surrounded by 
French cavalry, one can catch a glimpse of her 
big face, and dowdy little figure, which never- 
theless she can make so dignified when occasion 
requires. The stay here is, indeed, a holiday for 
this record-breaking sovereign, who potters about 
her private grounds of a morning in a donkey- 
chair, sunning herself and watching her Batten- 
berg grandchildren at play. In the afternoon, 
she drives a couple of hours — in an open car- 
riage — one outrider in black livery alone dis- 
tinguishing her turnout from the others. 

The Prince of Wales makes his headquarters 
at Cannes where he has poor luck in sailing the 
Brittania, for which he consoles himself with 
jolly dinners at Monte Carlo. You can see him 
almost any evening in the Restaurant de Paris^ 
surrounded by his own particular set, — the 
Duchess of Devonshire (who started a penniless 
German officer's daughter, and became twice a 

[ 115] 



woi^LT>Lr w^rs & "btw^j^ts 

duchess); Lady de Grey and Lady Wolverton, 
both showing near six feet of slender English 
beauty; at their side, and lovelier than either, 
the Countess of Essex. The husbands of these 
"Merry Wives" are absent, but do not seem to 
be missed, as the ladies sit smoking and laughing 
over their coffee, the party only breaking up 
towards eleven o'clock to try its luck at trente 
et quarante, until a "special" takes them back 
to Cannes. 

He is getting sadly old and fat, is England's 
heir, the likeness to his mamma becoming more 
marked each year. His voice, too, is oddly like 
hers, deep and guttural, more adapted to the pa- 
ternal German (which all this family speak when 
alone) than to his native English. Hair, he has 
none, except a little fringe across the back of 
his head, just above a fine large roll of fat that 
blushes above his shirt-collar. Too bad that this 
discovery of the microbe of baldness comes rather 
late for him! He has a pleasant twinkle in his 
small eyes, and an entire absence of pose, that 
accounts largely for his immense and enduring 
popularity. 

But the Hotel Cap Martin shelters quieter 
crowned heads. The Emperor and Empress of 
Austria, who tramp about the hilly roads, the 
King and Queen of Saxony and the fat Arch- 
duchess Stephanie. Austria's Empress looks sadly 
changed and ill, as does another lady of whom one 
can occasionally catch a glimpse, walking pain- 

[ '16] 



Ror^ LTT Jtr p L^r 



fully with a crutch-stick in the shadow of the 
trees near her villa. It is hard to believe that this 
white-haired, bent old woman was once the im- 
perial beauty who from the salons of the Tuileries 
didated the fashions of the world ! Few have paid 
so dearly for their brief hour of splendor! 

Cannes with its excellent harbor is the centre 
of interest during the racing season when the 
Tsarewitsch comes on his yacht Czaritza. At 
the Battle of Flowers, one is pretty sure to see 
the Duke of Cambridge, his Imperial Highness, 
the Grand Duke Michael, Prince Christian of 
Denmark, H. R. H. the Duke of Nassau, H. 
I. H. the Archduke Ferdinand d'Este, their 
Serene Highnesses of Mecklenburg-Schwerin 
and the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas, also H. I. H. 
Marie Valerie and the Schleswig-Holsteins, pelt- 
ing each other and the public with confetti and 
flowers. Indeed, half the Almanack de Gotha, that 
continental "society list," seems to be sunning 
itself here and forgetting its cares, on bicycles or 
on board yachts. It is said that the Crown Prin- 
cess of Honolulu (whoever she may be) honors 
Mentone with her presence, and the newly de- 
posed Queen "Ranavalo" of Madagascar is en 
route to join in the fun. 

This crowd of royalty reminds me of a story 
the old sea-dogs who gather about the "Ad- 
mirals' corner" of the Metropolitan Club in 
Washington, love to tell you. An American 
cockswain, dazzled by a doubly royal visit, with 

[ "7] 



attendingsuites, on board the old "Constitution," 
came up to his commanding officer and touching 
his cap, said: 

"Beg pardon. Admiral, but one of them 
kings has tumbled down the gangway and broke 
his leg." 

It has become a much more amusing thing 
to wear a crown than it was. Times have changed 
indeed since Marie Laczinska lived the fifty 
lonely years of her wedded life and bore her 
many children, in one bed-room at Versailles — 
a monotony only broken by visits to Fontaine- 
bleau or Marly. Shakespeare's line no longer fits 
the case. 

Beyond securing rich matches for their chil- 
dren, and keeping a sharp lookout that the Rad- 
icals at home do not unduly cut down their civil 
lists, these great ones have little but their amuse- 
ments to occupy them. Do they ever refled:, as 
they rush about visiting each other and squabbling 
over precedence when they meet, that some fine 
morning the tax-payers may wake up, and ask 
each other why they are being crushed under 
such heavy loads, that eight hundred or more 
quite useless people may pass their lives in for- 
eign watering-places, away from their homes and 
their duties? It will be a bad day for them when 
the long-suffering subje6ts say to them, "Since 
we get on so exceedingly well during your many 
visits abroad, we think we will try how it will 
work without you at all!" 

[ i'8] 



Ror^LTT ^r PL^^r 



The Prince of little Monaco seems to be about 
the only one up to the situation, for he at least 
stays at home, and in connection with two other 
gentlemen runs an exceedingly good hotel and 
several restaurants on his estates, doing all he 
can to attract money into the place, while mak- 
ing the strictest laws to prevent his subjeCts gam- 
bling at the famous tables. Now if other royalties 
instead of amusing themselves all the year round 
would go in for something pradlical like this, 
they might become useful members of the com- 
munity. This idea of Monaco's Prince strikes 
one as most timely, and as opening a career for 
other indigent crowned heads. Hotels are get- 
ting so good and so numerous, that without 
some especial "attraction" a new one can hardly 
succeed; but a "Hohenzollern House" well sit- 
uated in Berlin, with William II. to receive the 
tourists at the door, and his fat wife at the desk, 
would be sure to prosper. It certainly would be 
pleasanter for him to spend money so honestly 
earned than the millions wrested from half-starv- 
ing peasants which form his present income. Be- 
sides there is almost as much gold lace on a hotel 
employee's livery as on a court costume! 

The numerous crowned heads one meets 
wandering about, can hardly lull themselves over 
their "games" with the flattering unCtion that 
they are of use, for, have they not France before 
them (which they find so much to their taste) 
stronger, richer, more respedted than ever since 

[ "9] 



she shook herself free of such incumbrances? 
Not to mention our own democratic country, 
which has managed to hold its own, in spite of 
their many gleeful predictions to the contrary. 



[ I20 ] 



N'- 1 8 

A Rock Ahead 



HAVING had occasion several times dur- 
ing this past season, to pass by the larger 
stores in the vicinity of Twenty-third 
Street, I have been struck more than ever, by 
the endless flow of womankind that beats against 
the doors of those establishments. If they were 
temples where a beneficent deity was distribut- 
ing health, learning, and all the good things of 
existence, the rush could hardly have been 
greater. It saddened me to realize that each of 
the eager women I saw was, on the contrary, dis- 
pensing something of her strength and brain, as 
well as the wearily earned stipend of the men of 
her family (if not her own), for what could be 
of little profit to her. 

It occurred to me that, if the people who are 
so quick to talk about the elevating and refining 
influences of women, could take an hour or two 
and insped: the centres in question, they might 
not be so firm in their beliefs. For, relu6tant as 
I am to acknowledge it, the one great misfor- 
tune in this country, is the unnatural position 
which has been (from some mistaken idea of 
chivalry) accorded to women here. The result of 
placing them on this pedestal, and treating them 
as things apart, has been to make women in 
America poorer helpmeets to their husbands 

c i^i ] 



than in any other country on the face of the 
globe, civilized or uncivilized. 

Strange as it may appear, this is not confined 
to the rich, but permeates all classes, becoming 
more harmful in descending the social scale, and 
it will bring about a disintegration of our so- 
ciety, sooner than could be believed. The saying 
on which we have all been brought up, viz., that 
you can gauge the point of civilization attained 
in a nation by the position it accords to woman, 
was quite true as long as woman was considered 
man's inferior. To make her his equal was per- 
fectly just; all the trouble begins when you at- 
tempt to make her man's superior, a something 
apart from his working life, and not the com- 
panion of his troubles and cares, as she was in- 
tended to be. 

When a small shopkeeper in Europe marries, 
the next day you will see his young wife taking 
her place at the desk in his shop. While he serves 
his customers, his smiling spouse keeps the books, 
makes change, and has an eye on the employees. 
At noon they dine together; in the evening, after 
the shop is closed, are pleased or saddened to- 
gether over the results of the day. The wife's dot 
almost always goes into the business, so that 
there is a community of interest to unite them, 
and their lives are passed together. In this coun- 
try, what happens? The husband places his new 
wife in a small house, or in two or three fur- 
nished rooms, generally so far away that all idea 

[ i^^ ] 



^ ROC^ ^HE^T> 



of dining with her is impossible. In consequence, 
he has a "quick lunch" down town, and does 
not see his wife between eight o'clock in the 
morning and seven in the evening. His business 
is a closed book to her, in which she can have 
no interest, for her weary husband naturally 
revolts from talking "shop," even if she is in a 
position to understand him. 

His false sense of shielding her from the rude 
world makes him keep his troubles to himself, 
so she rarely knows his financial position and 
sulks over his "meanness " to her, in regard to 
pin-money; and being a perfe6i:ly idle person, 
her days are apt to be passed in a way especially 
devised by Satan for unoccupied hands. She has 
learned no cooking from her mother; "going to 
market" has become a thing of the past. So she 
falls a vi6lim to the allurements of the bargain- 
counter; returning home after hours of aimless 
wandering, irritable and aggrieved because she 
cannot own the beautiful things she has seen. 
She passes the evening in trying to win her hus- 
band's consent to some purchase he knows he 
cannot afford, while it breaks his heart to refuse 
her — some obje6t, which, were she really his 
companion, she would not have had the time to 
see or the folly to ask for. 

The janitor in our building is truly a toiler. 
He rarely leaves his dismal quarters under the 
sidewalk, but "Madam" walks the streets clad 
in sealskin and silk, a" Gainsborough" crowning 

[ 123 ] 



her false "bang." I always think of MaxO'Rell's 
clever saying, when I see her: "The sweat of the 
American husband crystallizes into diamond 
ear-rings for the American woman." Myjani- 
tress sports a diminutive pair of those jewels, 
and has hopes of larger ones! Instead of "do- 
ing" the bachelor's rooms in the building as 
her husband's helpmeet, she "does" her spouse, 
and a char-woman works for her. She is one of the 
drops in the tide that ebbs and flows on Twenty- 
third Street — a discontented woman placed in a 
false position by our absurd customs. 

Go a little further up in the social scale and 
you will find the same "detached" feeling. In a 
household I know of only one horse and a coupe 
can be afforded. Do you suppose it is for the 
use of the weary breadwinner? Not at all. He 
walks from his home to the "elevated." The 
carriage is to take his wife to teas or the park. 
In a year or two she will go abroad, leaving him 
alone to turn the crank that produces the in- 
come. As it is, she always leaves him for six 
months each year in a half-closed house, to the 
tender mercies of a caretaker. Two additional 
words could be advantageously added to the 
wedding service. After "for richer for poorer," 
I should like to hear a bride promise to cling to 
her husband " for winter for summer!" 

Make another step up and stand in the en- 
trance of a house at two a. M.,just as the cotil- 
lion is commencing, and watch the couples leav- 

[ ^24 ] 



^ ROCF^ ^HE^T> 



ing.The husband, who has been in Wall Street all 
day, knows that he must be there again at nine 
next morning. He is furious at the lateness of 
the hour, and dropping with fatigue. His wife, 
who has done nothing to weary her, is equally 
enraged to be taken away just as the ball was 
becoming amusing. What a happy, united pair 
they are as the footman closes the door and the 
carriage rolls off home! Who is to blame? The 
husband is vainly trying to lead the most exacting 
of double lives, that of a business man all day 
and a society man all night. You can pick him 
out at a glance in a ballroom. His eye shows you 
that there is no rest for him, for he has placed 
his wife at the head of an establishment whose 
working crushes him into the mud of care and 
anxiety. Has he any one to blame but himself? 

In England, I am told, the man of a family 
goes up to London in the spring and gets his 
complete outfit, down to the smallest details of 
hat-box and umbrella. If there happens to be 
money left, the wife gets a new gown or two. If 
not, she "turns*' the old ones and rejoices vica- 
riously in the splendor of her "lord." I know 
one charming little home over there, where the 
ladies cannot afford a pony-carriage, because the 
three indispensable hunters eat up the where- 
withal. 

Thackeray was delighted to find one house- 
hold (Major Ponto's) where the governess ruled 
supreme, and I feel a fiendish pleasure in these 

[ 125] 



accounts of a country where men have been able 
to maintain some rights, and am moved to preach 
a crusade for the liberation of the American hus- 
band, that the poor, down-trodden creature may- 
revolt from the slavery where he is held and once 
more claim his birthright. If he be prompt to ad: 
(and is successful) he may work such a reform 
that our girls, on marrying, may feel that some 
duties and responsibilities go with their new 
positions; and a state of things be changed, where 
it is possible forawoman to be pitied by her friends 
as a model of abnegation, because she has decided 
to remain in town during the summer to keep 
her husband company and make his weary home- 
coming brighter. Or where (as in a story recently 
heard) a foreigner on being presented to an 
American bride abroad and asking for her hus- 
band, could hear in answer: "Oh, he could not 
come; he was too busy. I am making my wed- 
ding-trip without him." 



[ 1^6] 



N'' 19 

The Grand T^rix 



IN most cities, it is impossible to say when 
the "season'* ends. In London and with 
us in New York it dwindles off without 
any special finish, but in Paris it closes like a 
trap-door, or the curtain on the last scene of a 
pantomime, while the lights are blazing and the 
orchestra is banging its loudest. The Grand Prix, 
which takes place on the second Sunday in June, 
is the climax of the spring gayeties. Up to that 
date, the social pace has been getting faster and 
faster, like the finish of the big race itself, and 
fortunately for the lives of the women as well as 
the horses, ends as suddenly. 

In 1897, the last steeple chase at Auteuil, 
which precedes the Grand Prix by one week, was 
won by a horse belonging to an actress of the 'Thea- 
tre Franfais, a lady who has been a great deal 
before the public already in connexion with the 
life and death of young Lebaudy. This youth 
having had the misfortune to inherit an enor- 
mous fortune, while still a mere boy, plunged 
into the wildest dissipation, and became the prey 
of a band of sharpers and blacklegs. Mile. Marie 
Louise Marsy appears to have been the one per- 
son who had a sincere aifedlion for the unfor- 
tunate youth. When his health gave way during 
his military service, she threw over her engage- 

[ 127 ] 



ment with the Fran^ais^ and nursed her lover 
until his death — a devotion rewarded by the gift 
of a million. 

At the present moment, four or five of the 
band of self-styled noblemen who traded on the 
boy's inexperience and generosity, are serving 
out terms in the state prisons for blackmailing, 
and the 'Theatre Fran^ais possesses the anomaly 
of a young and beautiful adress, who runs a 
racing stable in her own name. 

The Grand Prix dates from the reign of Na- 
poleon III., who, at the suggestion of the great 
railway companies, inaugurated this race in 1862, 
in imitation of the English Derby, as a means 
of attracting people to Paris. The city and the 
railways each give half of the forty-thousand- 
dollar prize. It is the great official race of the 
year. The President occupies the central pavil- 
ion, surrounded by the members of the cabinet 
and the diplomatic corps. On the tribunes and 
lawn can be seen the Tout Paris — all the celebri- 
ties of the great and half-world who play such 
an important part in the life of France's capital. 
The whole colony of the Rastaquoueres, is sure to 
be there, ^^ Rastas^^ as they are familiarly called 
by the Parisians, who make little if any distinc- 
tion in their minds between a South American 
(blazing in diamonds and vulgar clothes) and 
our own seled: (?) colony. Apropos of this ina- 
bility of the Europeans to appreciate our fine 
social distinctions, I have been told of a well-born 

[ 128 ] 



THE GR<^NT> PRIX 



New Yorker who took a French noblewoman 
rather to task for receiving an American she 
thought unworthy of notice, and said: 

"How can you receive her? Her husband 
keeps a hotel!" 

"Is that any reason?" asked the French- 
woman; "I thought ^//Americans kept hotels." 

For the Grand Prix, every woman not abso- 
lutely bankrupt has a new costume, her one idea 
being a creation that will attrad: attention and 
eclipse her rivals. The dressmakers have had a 
busy time of it for weeks before. 

Every horse that can stand up is pressed into 
service for the day. For twenty-four hours be- 
fore, the whole city is en fete ^ and Paris en fete is 
always a sight worth seeing. The natural gayety 
of the Parisians, a charadleristic noticed (if we 
are to believe the historians) as far back as the 
conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar, breaks out 
in all its amusing spontaneity. If the day is fine, 
the entire population gives itself up to amuse- 
ment. From early morning the current sets to- 
wards the charming corner of the Bois where 
the Longchamps race-course lies, pidturesquely 
encircled by the Seine (alive with a thousand 
boats), and backed by the woody slopes of 
Suresnes and St. Cloud. By noon every corner 
and vantage point of the landscape is seized 
upon, when, with a blare of trumpets and the 
rattle of cavalry, the President arrives in his 
turnout a la Daumont, two postilions in blue 

[ 129 ] 



and gold, and a piqueur^ preceded by a detach- 
ment of the showy Gardes Republicains on horse- 
back, and takes his place in the little pavilion 
where for so many years Eugenie used to sit in 
state, and which has sheltered so many crowned 
heads under its simple roof. Faure's arrival is 
the signal for the racing to begin, from that 
moment the interest goes on increasing until 
the great "event." Then in an instant the vast 
throng of human beings breaks up and flows 
homeward across the Bois, filling the big Place 
around the Arc de Triomphe, rolling down the 
Champs Elysees, in twenty parallel lines of car- 
riages. The sidewalks are filled with a laughing, 
singing, uproarious crowd that quickly invades 
every restaurant, cafe, or chop-house until their 
little tables overflow on to the grass and side- 
walks, and even into the middle of the streets. 
Later in the evening the open-air concerts and 
theatres are packed, and every little square 
organizes its impromptu ball, the musicians 
mounted on tables, and the crowd dancing gayly 
on the wooden pavement until daybreak. 

The next day, Paris becomes from a fashion- 
able point of view, "impossible." If you walk 
through the richer quarters, you will see only 
long lines of closed windows. The approaches 
to the railway stations are blocked with cabs 
piled with trunks and bicycles. The "great world" 
is fleeing to the seashore or its chateaux, and 
Paris will know it no more until January, for 

[ 130 ] 



THE GR^NT> PRIX 



the French are a country-loving race, and since 
there has been no court, the aristocracy pass 
longer and longer periods on their own estates 
each year, partly from choice and largely to show 
their disdain for the republic and its entertain- 
ments. 

The shady drives in the park, which only a day 
or two ago were so brilliant with smart traps and 
spring toilets, are become a cool wilderness, where 
you will meet, perhaps, a few maiden ladies ex- 
ercising fat dogs, uninterrupted except by the 
watering-cart or by a few stray tourists in cabs. 
Now comes a delightful time for the real ama- 
teur of Paris and the country around, which is 
full of charming corners where one can dine at 
quiet little restaurants, overhanging the water or 
buried among trees. You are sure of getting the 
best of attention from the waiters, and the dishes 
you order receive all the cook's attention. Of 
an evening the Bois is alive with a myriad of 
bicycles, their lights twinkling among the trees 
like many-colored fire-flies. To any one who 
knows how to live there, Paris is at its best in 
the last half of June and July. Nevertheless, in 
a couple of days there will not be an American 
in Paris, London being the obje6live point; for 
we love to be "in at the death," and a corona- 
tion, a musical festival, or a big race is sure to 
attrad: all our floating population. 

The Americans who have the hardest time 
in Paris are those who try to "run with the deer 

[ 131 ] 



and hunt with the hounds/' as the French prov- 
erb has it, who would fain serve God and Mam- 
mon. As anything especially amusing is sure to 
take place on Sunday in this wicked capital, our 
friends go through agonies of indecision, their 
consciences pulling one way, their desire to amuse 
themselves the other. Some find a middle course, 
it seems, for yesterday this conversation was over- 
heard on the steps of the American Church : 

First American Lady: "Are you going to stop 
for the sermon?" 

Second American Lady: "I am so sorry I 
can't, but the races begin at one!" 



[ 132 ] 



N'- 20 

^The Treadmill/' 



A HALF-HUMOROUS, half-pathetic 
epistle has been sent to me by a woman, 
who explains in it her particular per- 
plexity. Such letters are the windfalls of our pro- 
fession ! For what is more attradive than to have 
a woman take you for her lay confessor, to whom 
she comes for advice in trouble? opening her in- 
nocent heart for your inspection ! 

My correspondent complains that her days 
are not sufficiently long, nor is her strength 
great enough, for the thousand and one duties 
and obligations imposed upon her. "If," she 
says, "a woman has friends and a small place in 
the world — and who has not in these days? — 
she must golf or 'bike' or skate a bit, of a 
morning; then she is apt to lunch out, or have 
a friend or two in, to that meal. After luncheon 
there is sure to be a 'class' of some kind that 
she has foolishly joined, or a charity meeting, 
matinee, or reception; but above all, there are 
her 'duty' calls. She must be home at five to 
make tea, that she has promised her men friends, 
and they will not leave until it is time for her 
to dress for dinner, 'out' or at home, with often 
the opera, a supper, or a ball to follow. It is 
quite impossible," she adds, "under these cir- 
cumstances to apply one's self to anything seri- 

[ ^33 ] 



ous, to read a book or even open a periodical. 
The most one can accomplish is a glance at a 
paper." 

Indeed, it would require an exceptional con- 
stitution to carry out the above programme, not 
to mention the attention that a v/oman must 
(however reludtantly) give to her house and her 
family. Where are the quiet hours to be found 
for self-culture, the perusal of a favorite author, 
or, perhaps, a little timid "writing" on her own 
account? Nor does this treadmill round fill a few 
months only of her life. With slight variations 
of scene and costume, it continues through the 
year. 

A painter, I know, was fortunate enough to 
receive, a year or two ago, the commission to 
paint a well-known beauty. He was delighted 
with the idea and convinced that he could make 
her portrait the best work of his life, one that 
would be the stepping-stone to fame and for- 
tune. This was in the spring. He was naturally 
burning to begin at once, but found to his dis- 
may that the lady was just about starting for 
Europe. So he waited, and at her suggestion in- 
stalled himself a couple of months later at the 
seaside city where she had a cottage. No one 
could be more charming than she was, invit- 
ing him to dine and drive daily, but when he 
broached the subjed: of "sitting," was "too busy 
just that day." Later in the autumn she would 
be quite at his disposal. In the autumn, however, 

[ >34] 



''THE TREADMILL 



she was visiting, never ten days in the same 
place. Early winter found her "getting her house 
in order/' a mysterious rite apparently attended 
with vast worry and fatigue. With cooling en- 
thusiasm, the painter called and coaxed and 
waited. November brought the opera and the 
full swing of a New York season. So far she has 
given him half a dozen sittings, squeezed in be- 
tween a luncheon, which made her "unavoidably 
late,'* for which she is charmingly "sorry," and 
a reception that she was forced to attend, al- 
though "it breaks my heart to leave just as you 
are beginning to work so well, but I really must, 
or the tiresome old cat who is giving the tea will 
be saying all sorts of unpleasant things about 
me." So she flits off, leaving the poor, disillu- 
sioned painter before his canvas, knowing now 
that his dream is over, that in a month or two 
his pretty sitter will be off again to New Or- 
leans for the carnival, or abroad, and that his 
weary round of waiting will recommence. He 
will be fortunate if some day it does not float 
back to him, in the mysterious way disagreeable 
things do come to one, that she has been heard 
to say, "I fear dear Mr. Palette is not very 
clever, for I have been sitting to him for over 
a year, and he has really done nothing yet." 

He has been simply the vidim of a state of 
affairs that neither of them were strong enough 
to break through. It never entered into Beauty's 
head that she could lead a life different from her 

[ 135] 



W01^LT>Lr W^rS ^ "BYWAYS 

friends. She was honestly anxious to have a suc- 
cessful portrait of herself, but the sacrifice of 
any of her habits was more than she could make. 

Who among my readers (and I am tempted 
to believe they are all more sensible than the 
above young woman) has not, during a summ.er 
passed with agreeable friends, made a thousand 
pleasant little plans with them for the ensuing 
winter, — the books they were to read at the same 
time, the "exhibitions" they were to see, the 
visits to our wonderful colledlions in the Met- 
ropolitan Museum or private galleries, cosy little 
dinners, etc.? And who has not found, as the 
winter slips away, that few of these charming 
plans have been carried out? He and his friends 
have unconsciously fallen back into their ruts 
of former years, and the pleasant things pro- 
jedled have been brushed aside by that strong- 
est of tyrants, habit. 

I once asked a very great lady, whose gracious 
manner was never disturbed, who floated through 
the endless complications of her life with smiling 
serenity, how she achieved this Olympian calm. 
She was good enough to explain. "I make a list 
of what I want to do each day. Then, as I find 
my day passing, or I get behind, or tired, I throw 
over every other engagement. I could have done 
them all with hurry and fatigue. I prefer to do 
one-half and enjoy what I do. If I go to a house, 
it is to remain and appreciate whatever enter- 
tainment has been prepared for me. I never offer 

[ 136] 



''THE TREADMILL'' 

to any hostess the slight of a hurried, distrait 
'call/ with glances at my watch, and an 'on-the- 
wing' manner. It is much easier not to go, or 
to send a card." 

This brings me around to a subjed which I 
believe is one of the causes of my correspon- 
dent's dilemma. I fear that she never can refuse 
anything. It is a pecuHar trait of people who go 
about to amuse themselves, that they are always 
sure the particular entertainment they have been 
asked to last is going to "be amusing." It rarely 
is different from the others, but these people are 
convinced, that to stay away would be to miss 
something. A weary-looking girl about i a. m. 
(at a house-party) when asked why she did not 
go to bed if she was so tired, answered, "the 
nights I go to bed early, they always seem to 
do something jolly, and then I miss it." 

There is no greater proof of how much this 
weary round wears on women than the a6ts of 
the few who feel themselves strong enough in 
their position to defy custom. They have thrown 
off the yoke (at least the younger ones have) 
doubtless backed up by their husbands, for men 
are much quicker to see the aimlessness of this 
stupid social routine. First they broke down the 
great New-Year-call "grind." Men over forty 
doubtless recall with a shudder, that awful cus- 
tom which compelled a man to get into his dress 
clothes at ten a. m., and pass his day rushing 
about from house to house like a postman. Out- 

[ 137 ] 



of-town clubs and sport helped to do away with 
that remnant of New Amsterdam. Next came 
the male revolt from the afternoon "tea" or 
"musical." A black coat is rare now at either 
of these fundlions, or if seen is pretty sure to be 
on a back over fifty. Next, we lords of crea- 
tion refused to call at all, or leave our cards. A 
married woman now leaves her husband's card 
with her own, and sisters leave the "pasteboard" 
of their brothers and often those of their bro- 
thers* friends. Any combination is good enough 
to "shoot a card." 

In London the men have gone a step further. 
It is not uncommon to hear a young man boast 
that he never owned a visiting card or made a 
"duty" call in his life. Neither there nor with 
us does a man count as a "call" a quiet cup of 
tea with a woman he likes, and a cigarette and 
quiet talk until dressing time. Let the young 
women have courage and take matters into their 
own hands. (The older ones are hopeless and 
will go on pushing this Juggernaut car over each 
other's weary bodies, until the end of the chap- 
ter.) Let them have the courage occasionally to 
"refuse" something, to keep themselves free 
from aimless engagements, and bring this paste- 
board war to a close. If a woman is attradive, 
she will be asked out all the same, never fear! 
If she is not popular, the few dozen of "egg-shell 
extra" that she can manage to slip in at the 
front doors of her acquaintances will not help 
her much. [ ij^ 1 



''THE TREADMILL'' 

If this matter is, however, so vastly important 
in women's eyes, why not adopt the continental 
and diplomatic custom and send cards by post 
or otherwise? There, if a new-comer dines out 
and meets twenty-five people for the first time, 
cards must be left the next day at their twenty- 
five respective residences. How the cards get 
there is of no importance. It is a diplomatic 
fidlion that the new acquaintance has called in 
person, and the call will be returned within 
twenty-four hours. Think of the saving of time 
and strength! In Paris, on New Year's Day, 
people send cards by post to everybody they 
wish to keep up. That does for a year, and no 
more is thought about it. All the time thus gained 
can be given to culture or recreation. 

I have often wondered why one sees so few 
women one knows at our picture exhibitions or 
flower shows. It is no longer a mystery to me. 
They are all busy trotting up and down our long 
side streets leaving cards. Hideous vision ! Should 
Dante by any chance reincarnate, he would find 
here the material ready made to his hand for an 
eighth circle in his Inferno, 



[ 139 ] 



iV^- 21 

^^Like Master Like Man." 



A FREQUENT and naive complaint 
one hears, is of the unsatisfadoriness 
of servants generally, and their ingrati- 
tude and astonishing lack of affedlion for their 
masters, in particular. "After all I have done for 
them," is pretty sure to sum up the long tale 
of a housewife's griefs. Of all the delightful in- 
consistencies that grace the female mind, this 
latter point of view always strikes me as being 
the most complete. I artfully lead my fair friend 
on to tell me all about her woes, and she is sure 
to be exquisitely one-sided and quite unconscious 
of her position. "They are so extravagant, take 
so little interest in my things, and leave me at 
a moment's notice, if they get an idea I am go- 
ing to break up. Horrid things! I wish I could 
do without them ! They cause me endless worry 
and annoyance." My friend is very nearly right, 
— but with whom lies the fault? 

The conditions were bad enough years ago, 
when servants were kept for decades in the same 
family, descending like heirlooms from father to 
son, often (abroad) being the foster sisters or 
brothers of their masters, and bound to the 
household by an hundred ties of sympathy and 
tradition. But in our day, and in America, where 
there is rarely even a common language or na- 

[ HO ] 



''LIKE M^STE^ LIKE M ^ 2<^' 

tionality to form a bond, and where households 
are broken up with such facility, the relation be- 
tween master and servant is often so strained and 
so unpleasant that we risk becoming (what for- 
eigners reproach us with being), a nation of 
hotel-dwellers. Nor is this class-feeling greatly 
to be wondered at. The contrary would be as- 
tonishing. From the primitive household, where 
a poor neighbor comes in as "help," to the 
"great" establishment where the butler and 
housekeeper eat apart, and a group of plush-clad 
flunkies imported from England adorn the en- 
trance-hall, nothing could be better contrived to 
set one class against another than domestic ser- 
vice. 

Proverbs have grown out of it in every lan- 
guage. "No man is a hero to his valet," and 
"familiarity breeds contempt," are clear enough. 
Our comic papers are full of the misunderstand- 
ings and absurdities of the situation, while one 
rarely sees a joke made about the other ways 
that the poor earn their living. Think of it for 
a moment! To be obliged to attend people at 
the times of day when they are least attra(5live, 
when from fatigue or temper they drop the mask 
that society glues to their faces so many hours 
in the twenty-four; to see always the seamy side 
of life, the small expedients, the aids to nature; 
to stand behind a chair and hear an acquain- 
tance of your master's ridiculed, who has just 
been warmly praised to his face; to see a host- 

[ HI ] 



ess who has been graciously urging her guests 
"not to go so soon," blurt out all her boredom 
and thankfulness "that those tiresome So-and- 
So's" are "paid off at last/' as soon as the door 
is closed behind them, must needs give a curi- 
ous bent to a servant's mind. They see their 
employers insincere, and copy them. Many a 
mistress who has been smilingly assured by her 
maid how much her dress becomes her, and how 
young she is looking, would be thunderstruck to 
hear herself laughed at and criticised (none too 
delicately) five minutes later in that servant's 
talk. 

Servants are trained from their youth up to 
conceal their true feelings. A domestic who said 
what she thought would quickly lose her place. 
Frankly, is it not asking a good deal to expedl 
a maid to be very fond of a lady who makes her 
sit up night after night until the small hours to 
unlace her bodice or take down her hair; or im- 
agine a valet can be devoted to a master he has 
to get into bed as best he can because he is too 
tipsy to get there unaided? Immortal "Figaro" 
is the type! Supple, liar, corrupt, intelligent,- — 
he aids his master and laughs at him, feathering 
his own nest the while. There is a saying that 
"horses corrupt whoever lives with them." It 
would be more corre6l to say that domestic ser- 
vice demoralizes alike both master and man. 

Already we are obliged to depend on immi- 
gration for our servants because an American 

[ 142 ] 



"-LIKE M^STEI^ LIKE M ^ D<J' 

revolts from the false position, though he will- 
ingly accepts longer hours or harder work where 
he has no one around him but his equals. It is 
the old story of the free, hungry wolf, and the 
well-fed, but chained, house-dog. The foreigners 
that immigration now brings us, from countries 
where great class distindlions exist, find it natu- 
ral to "serve." With the increase in education 
and consequent self-respe6t, the difficulty of 
getting efficient and contented servants will in- 
crease with us. It has already become a great 
social problem in England. The trouble lies be- 
neath the surface. If a superior class accept ser- 
vice at all, it is with the intention of quickly 
getting money enough to do something better. 
With them service is merely the means to an 
end. A first step on the ladder! 

Bad masters are the cause of so much suffer- 
ing, that to pro ted themselves, the great brother- 
hood of servants have imagined a system of 
keeping run of "places," and giving them a 
"character" which an aspirant can find out with 
little trouble. This organization is so complete, 
and so well carried out, that a household where 
the lady has a "temper," where the food is poor, 
or which breaks up often, can rarely get a first- 
class domestic. The "place" has been boycotted, 
a good servant will sooner remain idle than enter 
it. If circumstances are too much for him and 
he accepts the situation, it is with his eyes open, 
knowing infinitely more about his new employ- 

[ H3 ] 



ers and their failings than they dream of, or than 
they could possibly find out about him. 

One thing never can be sufficiently impressed 
on people, viz. : that we are forced to live with 
deted:ives, always behind us in caps or dress- 
suits, ready to note every careless word, every 
incautious criticism of friend or acquaintance — 
their money matters or their love affairs — and 
who have nothing more interesting to do than 
to repeat what they have heard, with embroid- 
eries and additions of their own. Considering 
this, and that nine people out of ten talk quite 
oblivious of their servants* presence, it is to be 
wondered at that so little (and not that so much) 
trouble is made. 

It always amuses me when I ask a friend if 
she is going abroad in the spring, to have her 
say "Hush!" with a frightened glance towards 
the door. 

"I am; but I do not want the servants to 
know, or the horrid things would leave me!" 

Poor, simple lady ! They knew it before you 
did, and had discussed the whole matter over 
their "tea" while it was an almost unuttered 
thought in your mind. If they have not already 
given you notice, it is because, on the whole, 
your house suits them well enough for the pres- 
ent, while they look about. Do not worry your 
simple soul, trying to keep anything from them. 
They know the amount of your last dressmak- 
er's bill, and the row your husband made over 

[ 144 ] 



''LIKE M^SrE%^ LIKE M ^ D<J' 

it. They know how much you would have liked 
young "Croesus" for your daughter, and the 
little tricks you played to bring that marriage 
about. They know why you are no longer asked 
to dine at Mrs. Swell's, which is more than you 
know yourself. Mrs. Swell explained the matter 
to a few friends over her lunch-table recently, 
and the butler told your maid that same even- 
ing, who was laughing at the story as she put 
on your slippers! 

Before we blame them too much, however, 
let us remember that they have it in their power 
to make great trouble if they choose. And con- 
sidering the little that is made in this way, we 
must conclude that, on the whole, they are bet- 
ter than we give them credit for being, and fill 
a trying situation with much good humor and 
kindliness. The lady who is astonished that they 
take so little interest in her, will perhaps feel 
differently if she refledls how little trouble she 
has given herself to find out their anxieties and 
griefs, their temptations and heart-burnings; 
their material situation ; whom they support with 
their slowly earned wages ; what claims they have 
on them from outside. If she will also refle6t on 
the number of days in a year when she is "not 
herself," when headaches or disappointments 
ruffle her charming temper, she may come to the 
conclusion that it is too much to exped: all the 
virtues for twenty dollars a month. 

A little more human interest, my good friends, 

[ H5 ] 



wo'B^LT>Lr w^rs & "Br^^rs 

a little more indulgence, and you will not risk 
finding yourself in the position of the lady who 
wrote me that last summer she had been obliged 
to keep open house for "'Cook' tourists!" 



[ 146] 



TTP" ^^ Jft^^h ^^ ^^ ^JTlf ^^ ^^ ^^ "Tf^^S ^^ nT^ 

^ jy^ki^ M^ Jdhit Ji^klJi^kiL J^kiLJi^kiLJt^kUM^^J^kU^ 

A^'- 22 

An English Invasion of the 

Riviera 



WHEN sixty years ago Lord Brougham, 
en route for Italy, was thrown from 
his travelhng berline and his leg was 
broken, near the Italian hamlet of Cannes, the 
Riviera was as unknown to the polite world as 
the centre of China. The grand tour which every 
young aristocrat made with his tutor, on coming 
of age, only included crossing from France into 
Italy by the Alps. It was the occurrence of an 
unusually severe winter in Switzerland that 
turned Brougham aside into the longer and less 
travelled route via the Corniche, the marvellous 
Roman road at that time fallen into oblivion, 
and little used even by the local peasantry. 

During the tedious weeks while his leg was 
mending. Lord Brougham amused himself by 
exploring the surrounding country in his car- 
riage, and was quick to realize the advantages 
of the climate, and appreciate the marvellous 
beauty of that coast. Before the broken member 
was whole again, he had bought a trad: of land 
and begun a villa. Small seed, to furnish such a 
harvest! To the traveller of to-day the Riviera 
offers an almost unbroken chain of beautiful 
residences from Marseilles to Genoa. 

[ 147] 



A Briton willingly follows where a lord leads, 
and Cannes became the centre of English fash- 
ion, a position it holds to-day in spite of many 
attractive rivals, and the defedlion of Vidloria 
who comes now to Cimiez, back of Nice, being 
unwilling to visit Cannes since the sudden death 
there of the Duke of Albany. A statue of Lord 
Brougham, the "discoverer" of the littoral, has 
been eredled in the sunny little square at Cannes, 
and the English have in many other ways, 
stamped the city for their own. 

No other race carry their individuality with 
them as they do. They can live years in a coun- 
try and assimilate none of its customs; on the 
contrary, imposing habits of their own. It is just 
this that makes them such wonderful colonizers, 
and explains why you will find little groups of 
English people drinking ale and playing golf in 
the shade of the Pyramids or near the frozen 
slopes of Foosiyama. The real inwardness of it is 
that they are a dull race, and, like dull people, 
despise all that they do not understand. To dif- 
fer from them is to be in the wrong. They cannot 
argue with you; they simply know, and that ends 
the matter. 

I had a discussion recently with a Briton on 
the pronunciation of a word. As there is no "In- 
stitute," as in France, to settle matters of this 
kind, I maintained that we Americans had as 
much authority for our pronunciation of this 
particular word as the English. The answer was 
charaderistic. [ 148 1 



An ENGLISH INVASION of the RIVIERA 






I know I am right," said my Island friend, 
because that is the way I pronounce it!" 

Walking along the principal streets of Cannes 
to-day, you might imagine yourself (except for 
the climate) at Cowes or Brighton, so British 
are the shops and the crowd that passes them. 
Every restaurant advertises "afternoon tea" and 
Bass's ale, and every other sign bears a London 
name. This little matter of tea is particularly 
charaderistic of the way the English have im- 
posed a taste of their own on a rebellious nation. 
Nothing is further from the French taste than 
tea-drinking, and yet a Parisian lady will now 
invite you gravely to "five o'clocker" with her, 
although I can remember when that beverage 
was abhorred by the French as a medicine; if 
you had asked a Frenchman to take a cup of 
tea, he would have answered: 

"Why? I am not ill!" 

Even Paris (that supreme and undisputed ar- 
biter of taste) has submitted to English influ- 
ence; tailor-made dresses and low-heeled shoes 
have become as "good form" in France as in 
London. The last two Presidents of the French 
Republic have taken the oath of office dressed 
in frock-coats instead of the dress clothes to 
which French officials formerly clung as to the 
sacraments. 

The municipalities of the little Southern cities 
were quick to seize their golden opportunity, 
and everything was done to detain the rich Eng- 

[ H9 ] 



wo%^LT>LY w^rs & "BTW^rS 

lish wandering down towards Italy. Millions were 
spent in transforming their cramped, dirty, lit- 
tle towns. Wide boulevards bordered with palm 
and eucalyptus spread their sunny lines in all 
dire6lions, being baptized Promenade des Anglais 
or Boulevard Vi Gloria, in artful flattery. The 
narrow mountain roads were widened, casinos 
and theatres built and carnival fetes organized, 
the cities offering "cups" for yacht- or horse- 
races, and giving grounds for tennis and golf 
clubs. Clever Southern people! The money re- 
turned to them a hundredfold, and they lived 
to see their wild coast become the chosen resi- 
dence of the wealthiest aristocracy in Europe, 
and the rocky hillsides blossom into terrace 
above terrace of villa gardens, where palm and 
rose and geranium vie with the olive and the 
mimosa to shade the white villas from the sun. 
To-day, no little town on the coast is without 
its English chapel, British club, tennis ground, 
and golf links. On a fair day at Monte Carlo, 
Nice, or Cannes, the prevailing conversation is 
in English, and the handsome, well-dressed sons 
of Albion lounge along beside their astonishing 
womenkind as thoroughly at home as on Bond 
Street. 

Those wonderful English women are the 
source of unending marvel and amusement to 
the French. They can never understand them, 
and small wonder, for with the exception of 
the small "set" that surrounds the Prince of 

[ 150] 



An ENGLISH INVASION of the RIVIERA 

Wales, who are dressed in the Parisian fash- 
ion, all English women seem to be overwhelmed 
with regret at not being born men, and to have 
spent their time and ingenuity since, in trying- 
to make up for nature's mistake. Every mascu- 
line garment is twisted by them to fit the female 
figure; their conversation, like that of their bro- 
thers, is about horses and dogs; their hats and 
gloves are the same as the men's ; and when with 
their fine, large feet in stout shoes they start off, 
with that particular swinging gait that makes the 
skirt seem superfluous, for a stroll of twenty 
miles or so. Englishwomen do seem to the un- 
initiated to have succeeded in their ambition of 
obliterating the difference between the sexes. 

It is of an evening, however, when conceal- 
ment is no longer possible, that the native taste 
bursts forth, the Anglo-Saxon standing declared 
in all her plainness. Strong is the contrast here, 
where they are placed side by side with all that 
Europe holds of elegant, and well-dressed. 
Frenchwomen, whether of the "world" or the 
"half-world," are invariably marvels of fitness 
and freshness, the simplest materials being con- 
verted by their skilful touch into toilettes, so 
artfully adapted to the wearer's figure and com- 
plexion, as to raise such "creations" to the level 
of a fine art. 

An artist feels, he must fix on canvas that 
particular combination of colors or that won- 
derful line of bust and hip. It is with a shudder 

[ "51 ] 



JVOT^LDLT W^rS & "BTTV^TS 

that he turns to the British matron, for she has 
probably, for this occasion, draped herself in an 
"art material," — principally "Liberty" silks of 
dirty greens and blues (aesthetic shades!). He is 
tempted to cry out in his disgust: "Oh, Lib- 
erty! Liberty! How many crimes are committed 
in thy name!" It is one of the oddest things in 
the world that the English should have eleded 
to live so much in France, for there are proba- 
bly nowhere two peoples so diametrically op- 
posed on every point, or who so persistently 
and wilfully misunderstand each other, as the 
English and the French. 

It has been my fate to live a good deal on 
both sides of the Channel, and nothing is more 
amusing than to hear the absurdities that are 
gravely asserted by each of their neighbors. To 
a Briton, a Frenchman will always be "either 
tiger or monkey" according to Voltaire; while 
to the French mind English gravity is only hy- 
pocrisy to cover every vice. Nothing pleases him 
so much as a great scandal in England; he will 
gleefully bring you a paper containing the ac- 
count of it, to prove how true is his opinion. It 
is quite useless to explain to the British mind, 
as I have often tried to do, that all Frenchmen 
do not pass their lives drinking absinthe on the 
boulevards; and as Englishmen seem to leave 
their morals in a valise at Dover when off for a 
visit to Paris, to be picked up on their return, 
it is time lost to try to make a Gaul understand 

[ 152] 



An ENGLISH INVASION of the RIVIERA 

what good husbands and fathers the sons of 
Albion are. 

These two great nations seem to stand in the 
relation to each other that Rome and Greece 
held. The English are the conquerors of the 
world, and its great colonizers; with a vast 
capital in which wealth and misery jostle each 
other on the streets; a hideous conglomeration 
of buildings and monuments, without form and 
void, very much as old Rome must have been 
under the Caesars, enormous buildings without 
taste, and enormous wealth. The French have 
inherited the temperament of the Greeks. The 
drama, painting, and sculpture are the preoccu- 
pation of the people. The yearly exhibitions are, 
for a month before they open, the unique sub- 
Jed: of conversation in drawing-room or club. 
The state protects the artist and buys his work. 
Their conservatoires form the singers, and their 
schools the painters and architedls of Europe 
and America. 

The English copy them in their big way, just 
as the Romans copied the masterpieces of Greek 
art, while they despised the authors. It is rare 
that a play succeeds in Paris which is not in- 
stantly translated and produced in London, 
often with the adapter's name printed on the 
programme in place of the author's, the French- 
man, who only wrote it, being ignored. Just as 
the Greeks faded away and disappeared before 
their Roman conquerors, it is to be feared that 

[ 153 ] 



in our day this people of a finer clay will suc- 
cumb. The "defects of their qualities" will be 
their ruin. They will stop at home, occupied with 
literature and art, perfeding their dainty cities; 
while their tougher neighbors are dominating the 
globe, imposing their language and customs on 
the conquered peoples of the earth. One feels 
this on the Riviera. It reminds you of the cuckoo 
who, once installed in a robin's nest, that seems 
to him convenient and warmly located in the sun- 
shine, ends by kicking out all the young robins. 



[ 154] 



N'' 23 

A Common Weakness 



GOVERNMENTS may change and all 
the conditions of life be modified, but 
certain ambitions and needs of man re- 
main immutable. Climates, customs, centuries, 
have in no way diminished the craving for con- 
sideration, the desire to be somebody, to bear 
some mark indicating to the world that one is 
not as other men. 

For centuries titles supplied the want. This 
satisfadion has been denied to us, so ambitious 
souls are obliged to seek other means to feed 
their vanity. 

Even before we were born into the world of 
nations, an attempt was made amongst the aris- 
tocratically minded court surrounding our chief 
magistrate, to form a society that should (without 
the name) be the beginning of a class apart. 

The order of the Cincinnati was to have been 
the nucleus of an American nobility. The ten- 
dencies of this society are revealed by the fad 
that primogeniture was its fundamental law. 
Nothing could have been more opposed to the 
spirit of the age, nor more at variance with the 
declaration of our independence, than the inser- 
tion of such a clause. This fad was discovered 
by the far-seeing eye of Washington, and the 
society was suppressed in the hope (shared by 

[ ^SS ] 



almost all contemporaries) that with new forms 
of government the nature of man would undergo 
a transformation and rise above such puerile 
ambitions. 

Time has shown the fallacy of these dreams. 
All that has been accomplished is the displace- 
ment of the objective point; the desire, the mania 
for a handle to one's name is as prevalent as ever. 
Leave the centres of civilization and wander in 
the small towns and villages of our country. 
Every other man you meet is introduced as the 
Colonel or the Judge, and you will do well not 
to inquire too closely into the matter, nor to ask 
to see the title-deeds to such distinctions. On the 
other hand, to omit his prefix in addressing one 
of these local magnates, would be to offend him 
deeply. The women-folk were quick to borrow 
a little of this distinction, and in Washington 
to-day one is gravely presented to Mrs. Senator 
Smith or Mrs. Colonel Jones. The climax be- 
ing reached by one aspiring female who styles 
herself on her visiting cards, " Mrs. Acting-As- 
sistant-Paymaster Robinson." If by any chance 
it should occur to any one to ask her motive in 
sporting such an unwieldy handle, she would say 
that she did it " because one can't be going about 
explaining that one is not just ordinary Mrs. 
Robinson or Thompson, like the thousandothers 
in town." A woman who cannot find an excuse 
for assuming such a prefix will sometime have 
recourse to another stratagem, to particularize an 

[ "56] 



e/f COMMOd^ WEAKNESS 

ordinary surname. She remembers that her hus- 
band, who ever since he was born has been known 
to everybody as Jim, is the proud possessor of 
the middle name Ivanhoe, or Pericles (probably 
the result of a romantic mother's reading); so 
one fine day the young couple bloom out as 
Mr. and Mrs. J. Pericles Sparks, to the amuse- 
ment of their friends, their own satisfaction, and 
the hopeless confusion of their tradespeople. 

Not long ago a Westerner, who went abroad 
with a travelling show, was received with enthu- 
siasm in England because it was thought "The 
Honorable" which preceded his name on his 
cards implied that although an American he was 
somehow the son of an earl. As a matter of fa6t 
he owed this title to having sat, many years be- 
fore in the Senate of a far-western State. He 
will cling to that "Honorable" and print it on 
his cards while life lasts. I was told the other 
day of an American carpet warrior who appeared 
at a court function abroad decorated with every 
college badge, and football medal in his posses- 
sion, to which he added at the last moment a 
brass trunk check, to complete the brilliancy of 
the efFe6l. This latter decoration attraded the 
attention of the Heir Apparent, who inquired 
the meaning of the mystic "416" upon it. This 
would have been a "facer" to any but a true son 
of Uncle Sam. Nothing daunted, however, our 
"General" replied "That, Sir, is the number of 
pitched battles I have won." 

[ 157 ] 



I have my doubts as to the absolute veracity 
of this tale. But that the son of one of our generals, 
appeared not long ago at a public reception 
abroad, wearing his father*s medals and decora- 
tions, is said to be true. Decorations on the Con- 
tinent are official badges of distindion conferred 
and recognized by the different governments. 
An American who wears, out of his own coun- 
try, an army or college badge which has no 
official existence, properly speaking, being recog- 
nized by no government, but which is made in- 
tentionally to look as much as possible like the 
"Legion d^Honneur," is deliberately imposing 
on the ignorance of foreigners, and is but little 
less of a pretentious idiot than the owners of the 
trunk check and the borrowed decorations. 

There seems no end to the ways a little 
ambitious game can be played. One device much 
in favor is for the wife to attach her own family 
name to that of her husband by means of a hy- 
phen. By this arrangement she does not entirely 
lose her individuality ; as a result we have a splen- 
did assortment of hybrid names, such as Van 
Cortland-Smith and Beekman-Brown. Be they 
never so incongruous these double-barrelled 
cognomens serve their purpose and raise ambi- 
tious mortals above the level of other Smiths 
and Browns. Finding that this arrangement works 
well in their own case, it is passed on to the 
next generation. There are no more Toms and 
Bills in these aspiring days. The little boys are 

[ 158 ] 



e/f COMMOtH^ WEAKNESS 

all Cadwalladers or Carrolls. Their school-fel- 
lows, however, work sad havoc with these high- 
sounding titles and quickly abbreviate them into 
humble "Cad" or "Rol." 

It is surprising to notice what a number of 
middle-aged gentlemen have blossomed out of 
late with decorations in their button-holes ac- 
cording to the foreign fashion. On inquiry I have 
discovered that these ornaments designate mem- 
bers of the G. A. R., the Loyal Legion, or some 
local Post, for the rosettes differ in form and 
color. When these gentlemen travel abroad, to 
reduce their waists or improve their minds, the 
effedls on the hotel waiters and cabmen must be 
immense. They will be charged three times the 
ordinary tariif instead of only the double which 
is the stranger's usual fate at the hands of sim- 
ple-minded foreigners. The satisfaction must be 
cheap, however, at that price. 

Even our wise men and sages do not seem to 
have escaped the contagion. One sees profes- 
sors and clergymen (who ought to set a better 
example) trailing half a dozen letters after their 
names, initials which to the initiated doubtless 
mean something, but which are also intended to 
fill the souls of the ignorant with envy. I can re- 
call but one case of a foreign decoration being re- 
fused by a compatriot. He was a genius and we all 
know that geniuses are crazy. This gentleman 
had done something particularly gratifying to an 
Eastern potentate, who in return offered him 

[ 159] 



one of his second-best orders. It was at once 
refused. When urged on him a second time our 
countryman lost his temper and answered, "If 
you want to give it to somebody, present it to 
my valet. He is most anxious to be decorated." 
And it was done! 

It does not require a deeply meditative mind 
to discover the motives of ambitious struggles. 
The first and strongest illusion of the human 
mind is to believe that we are different from our 
fellows, and our natural impulse is to try and im- 
press this belief upon others. 

Pride of birth is but one of the manifestations 
of the universal weakness — invariably taking 
stronger and stronger hold of the people, who 
from the modest dimension of their income, or 
other untoward circumstances, can find no out- 
ward and visible form with which to dazzle the 
world. You will find that a desire to shine is the 
secret of most of the tips and presents that are 
given while travelling or visiting, for they can 
hardly be attributed to pure spontaneous gene- 
rosity. 

How many people does one meet who talk 
of their poor and unsuccessful relatives while 
omitting to mention rich and powerful connec- 
tions? We are told that far from blaming such a 
tendency we are to admire it. That it is proper 
pride to put one*s best foot forward and keep 
an offending member well out of sight, that the 
man who wears a rosette in the button-hole of 

[ i6o ] 



c^ COMMOd^ WEAKNESS 

his coat and has half the alphabet galloping after 
his name, is an honor to his family. 

Far be it from me to deride this weakness in 
others, for in my heart I am persuaded that if 
I lived in China, nothing would please me more 
than to have my cap adorned with a coral but- 
ton, while if fate had cast my life in the pleas- 
ant places of central Africa, a ring in my nose 
would doubtless have filled my soul with joy. 
The fad that I share this weakness does not, 
however, prevent my laughing at such folly in 
others. 



[ i6i ] 



N'' 24 

Changing Paris 



PARIS is beginning to show signs of the 
coming "Exhibition of 1900/* and is in 
many ways going through a curious stage 
of transformation, socially as well as materially. 
The Palais de V Industrie^ familiar to all visitors 
here, as the home of the Salons^ the Horse 
Shows, and a thousand gz.Y fetes and merry-mak- 
ings, is being torn down to make way for the 
new avenue leading, with the bridge Alexander 
III., from the Champs Elysees to the Esplanade 
des Invalides. This thoroughfare with the gilded 
dome of Napoleon's tomb to close its perspec- 
tive is intended to be the feature of the coming 
" show." 

Curious irony of things in this world! The 
Palais de r Industrie was intended to be the one 
permanent building of the exhibition of 1854. 
An old "Journal" I often read tells how the 
writer saw the long line of gilded coaches (bor- 
rowed from Versailles for the occasion), eight 
horses apiece, led by footmen — horses and men 
blazing in embroidered trappings — leave the 
Tuileries and proceed at a walk to the great 
gateway of the now disappearing palace. Vic- 
toria and Albert who were on an official visit 
to the Emperor were the first to alight; then 
Eugenie in the radiance of her perfed: beauty 

C 162 ] 



CH^NGINQ P^RIS 



stepped from the coach (sad omen!) that fifty 
years before had taken Josephine in tears to 
Malmaison. 

It may interest some ladies to know how an 
Empress was dressed on that spring morning 
forty-four years ago. She wore rose-colored silk 
with an over-dress (I think that is what it is 
called) of black lace flounces, immense hoops, 
and a black Cha?iHlly lace shawl. Her hair, a 
brilliant golden auburn, was dressed low on the 
temples, covering the ears, and hung down her 
back in a gold net almost to her waist; at the 
extreme back of her head was placed a black 
and rose-colored bonnet; open "flowing" sleeves 
showed her bare arms, one-buttoned, straw- 
colored gloves, and ruby bracelets; she carried 
a tiny rose-colored parasol not a foot in diam- 
eter. 

How England's great sovereign was dressed 
the writer of the journal does not so well re- 
member, for in those days Eugenie was the 
cynosure of all eyes, and people rarely looked 
at anything else when they could get a glimpse 
of her lovely face. 

It appears, however, that the Queen sported 
an India shawl, hoops, and a green bonnet, 
which was not particularly becoming to her red 
face. She and Napoleon entered the building 
first; the Empress (who was in delicate health) 
was carried in an open chair, with Prince Albert 
walking at her side, a marvellously handsome 

[ 163] 



couple to follow the two dowdy little sovereigns 
who preceded them. The writer had by bribery 
succeeded in getting places in an entresol window 
under the archway, and was greatly impressed 
to see those four great ones laughing and jok- 
ing together over Eugenie's troubles in getting 
her hoops into the narrow chair! 

What changes have come to that laughing 
group! Two are dead, one dying in exile and 
disgrace; and it would be hard to find in the two 
rheumatic old ladies whom one sees pottering 
about the Riviera now, any trace of those smil- 
ing wives. In France it is as if a tidal wave had 
swept over Napoleon's court. Only the old 
palace stood severely back from the Champs 
Elysees, as if guarding its souvenirs. The pick 
of the mason has brought down the proud gate- 
way which its imperial builder fondly imagined 
was to last for ages. The Tuileries preceded it 
into oblivion. The Alpha and Omega of that 
gorgeous pageant of the fifties vanished like a 
mirage ! 

It is not here alone one finds Paris changing. 
A railway is being brought along the quais with 
its depot at the Invalides. Another is to find its 
terminus opposite the Louvre, where the pic- 
turesque ruin of the Cour des Comptes has stood 
half-hidden by the trees since 1870. A line of 
eledtric cars crosses the Rond Point, in spite of 
the opposition of all the neighborhood, anxious 
to keep, at least that fine perspective free from 

[ 164] 



CH^NG INg P^RIS 



such desecration. And, last but not least, there 
is every prosped: of an immense system of ele- 
vated railways being inaugurated in connexion 
with the coming world's fair. The direction of 
this kind of improvement is entirely in the hands 
of the Municipal Council, and that body has be- 
come (here in Paris) extremely radical, not to 
say communistic; and takes pleasure in annoying 
the inhabitants of the richer quarters of the city, 
under pretext of improvements and facilities of 
circulation. 

It is easy to see how strong the feeling is 
against the aristocratic class. Nor is it much 
to be wondered at ! The aristocracy seem to try 
to make themselves unpopular. They detest 
the republic, which has shorn them of their 
splendor, and do everything in their power (so- 
cially and diplomatically their power is still 
great) to interfere with and frustrate the plans 
of the government. Only last year they seized 
an opportunity at the funerals of the Duchesse 
d'Alen^on and the Due d'Aumale to make a 
royalist manifestation of the most pronounced 
charadler. The young Duchesse d' Orleans was 
publicly spoken of and treated as the "Queen 
of France;" at the private receptions given dur- 
ing her stay in Paris the same ceremonial was 
observed as if she had been really on the throne. 
The young Duke, her husband, was not present, 
being in exile as a pretender, but armorial bear- 
ings of the "reigning family," as their followers 

[ 165] 



insist on calling them, were hung around the 
Madeleine and on the funeral-cars of both the 
illustrious dead. 

The government is singularly lenient to the 
aristocrats. If a poor man cries "Long live the 
Commune!" in the street, he is arrested. The 
police, however, stood quietly by and let a group 
of the old nobility shout" Long live the Queen ! " 
as the train containing the young Duchesse 
d'Orleans moved out of the station. The secret 
of this leniency toward the "pretenders" to the 
throne, is that they are very little feared. If it 
amuses a set of wealthy people to play at hold- 
ing a court, the strong government of the re- 
public cares not one jot. The Orleans family 
have never been popular in France, and the young 
pretender's marriage to an Austrian Archduch- 
ess last year has not improved matters. 

It is the fashion in the conservative Faubourg 
St. Germain, to ridicule the President, his wife 
and their bourgeois surroundings, as forty years 
ago the parents of these aristocrats affedled to 
despise the im^mdl parvenus. The swells amused 
themselves during the official visit of the Em- 
peror and Empress of Russia last year (which 
was gall and wormwood to them) by exaggerat- 
ing and repeating all the small slips in etiquette 
that the President, an intelligent, but simple- 
mannered gentleman, was supposed tohavemade 
during the sojourn of his imperial guests. 

Both M. and Mme. Faure are extremely pop- 
[ i66 ] 



CH^NGINQ P^RIS 



ular with the people, and are heartily cheered 
whenever they are seen in public. The President 
is the despair of the lovers of routine and etiquette, 
walking in and out of his Palais of the Ely see, 
like a private individual, and breaking all rules 
and regulations. He is fond of riding, and jogs 
off to the Bois of a morning with no escort, and 
often of an evening drops in at the theatres in a 
casual way. The other night at the Fran^ais he 
suddenly appeared in the foyer des artistes (a 
beautiful greenroom, hung with historical por- 
traits of great acflors and adtresses, one of the 
prides of the theatre) in this informal manner. 
Mme. Bartet, who happened to be there alone 
at the time, was so impressed at such an unpre- 
cedented event that she fainted, and the Presi- 
dent had to run for water and help revive her. 
The next day he sent the great adtress a beauti- 
ful vase of Sevres china, full of water, in souvenir. 

To a lover of old things and old ways any 
changes in the Paris he has known and loved 
are a sad trial. Henri Drumont, in his delightful 
Mon Vieux PariSy deplores this modern mania 
for reform which has done such good work in 
the new quarters but should, he thinks, respedt 
the historic streets and shady squares. 

One naturally feels that the sights familiar in 
youth lose by being transformed and doubts 
the necessity of such improvements. 

The Rome of my childhood is no more! Half 
of Cairo was ruthlessly transformed in sixty-five 

[ 167 ] 



into a hideous caricature of modern Paris. Milan 
has been remodelled, each city losing in charm 
as it gained in convenience. 

So far Paris has held her own. The spirit of 
the city has not been lost, as in the other capitals. 
The fair metropolis of France, in spite of many 
transformations, still holds her admirers with a 
dominating sway. She pours out for them a 
strong elixir that once tasted takes the flavor out 
of existence in other cities and makes her adorers, 
when in exile, thirst for another draught of the 
subtle nectar. 



[ i68 ] 



Contentment 



As the result of certain ideal standards 
adopted among us when this country 
was still in long clothes, a time when 
the equality of man was the new "fad" of many 
nations, and the prizes of life first came within the 
reach of those fortunate or unscrupulous enough 
to seize them, it became the fashion (and has re- 
mained so down to our day) to teach every little 
boy attending a village school to look upon him- 
self as a possible future President, and to assume 
that every girl was preparing herself for the posi- 
tion of first lady in the land. This is very well in 
theory, and practice has shown that, as Napoleon 
said, "Every private may carry a marshal's baton 
in his knapsack." Alongside of the good such in- 
centive may produce, it is only fair, however, to 
consider also how much harm may lie in this way 
of presenting life to a child's mind. 

As a first result of such tall talking we find 
in America, more than in any other country, an 
inclination among all classes to leave the sur- 
roundings where they were born and bend their 
energies to struggling out of the position in life 
occupied by their parents. There are not want- 
ing theorists who hold that this is a quality in a 
nation, and that it leads to great results. A prop- 
osition open to discussion. 

[ ^69 1 



It is doubtless satisfadory to designate first 
magistrates who have raised themselves from 
humble beginnings to that proud position, and 
there are times when it is proper to recall such 
achievements to the rising generation. But as 
youth is proverbially over-confident it might 
also be well to point out, without danger of dis- 
couraging our sanguine youngsters, that for one 
who has succeeded, about ten million confident 
American youths, full of ambition and lofty aims, 
have been obliged to content themselves with 
being honest men in humble positions, even as 
their fathers before them. A sad humiliation, I 
grant you, for a self-resped:ing citizen, to end 
life just where his father did; often the case, 
nevertheless, in this hard world, where so many 
fine qualities go unappreciated, — no societies 
having as yet been formed to seek out "mute, 
inglorious Miltons," and ask to crown them! 

To descend abruptly from the sublime, to 
very near the ridiculous, — I had need last sum- 
mer of a boy to go with a lady on a trap and help 
about the stable. So I applied to a friend's coach- 
man, a hard-working Englishman, who was de- 
lighted to get the place for his nephew — an 
American-born boy — the child of a sister, in great 
need. As the boy*s clothes were hardly present- 
able, a simple livery was made for him; from 
that moment he pined, and finally announced 
he was going to leave. In answer to my surprised 
inquiries, I discovered that a friend of his from 

[ 170 ] 



CONTENTMENT 



the same tenement-house in which he had hved 
in New York had appeared in the village, and 
sooner than be seen in livery by his play-fellow 
he preferred abandoning his good place, the 
chance of being of aid to his mother, and learn- 
ing an honorable way to earn his living. Remon- 
strances were in vain; to the wrath of his uncle, 
he departed. The boy had, at his school, heard 
so much about everybody being born equal and 
every American being a gentleman by right of 
inheritance, that he had taken himself seriously, 
and despised a position his uncle was proud to 
hold, preferring elegant leisure in his native 
tenement-house to the humiliation of a livery. 
When at college I had rooms in a neat cot- 
tage owned by an American family. The father 
was a butcher, as were his sons. The only daugh- 
ter was exceedingly pretty. The hard-worked 
mother conceived high hopes for this favorite 
child. She was sent to a boarding-school, from 
which she returned entirely unsettled for life, 
having learned little except to be ashamed of her 
parents and to play on the piano. One of these 
instruments of torture was bought, and a room 
fitted up as a parlor for the daughter's use. As 
the family were fairly well-to-do, she was allowed 
to dress out of all keeping with her parents* 
position, and, egged on by her mother, tried 
her best to marry a rich "student." Failing in 
this, she became discontented, unhappy, and 
finally there was a scandal, this poor vidim of a 

[171 ] 



wo'B^LT>Lr w^rs & ^rfFc^rs 

false ambition going to swell the vast tide of a 
city's vice. With a sensible education, based on 
the idea that her father's trade was honorable 
and that her mission in life was to aid her mo- 
ther in the daily work until she might marry 
and go to her husband, prepared by experience 
to cook his dinner and keep his house clean, 
and finally bring up her children to be honest 
men and women, this girl would have found a 
happy future waiting for her, and have been of 
some good in her humble way. 

It is useless to multiply illustrations. One has 
but to look about him in this unsettled country 
of ours. The other day in front of my door the 
perennial ditch was being dug for some gas-pipe 
or other. Two of the gentlemen who had con- 
sented to do this labor wore frock-coats and top 
hats — or what had once been those articles of 
attire — instead of comfortable and appropriate 
overalls. Why? Because, like the stable-boy, to 
have worn any distinctive dress would have been 
in their minds to stamp themselves as belong- 
ing to an inferior class, and so interfered with 
their chances of representing this country later 
at the Court of St. James, or presiding over the 
Senate, — positions (to judge by their criticism 
of the present incumbents) they feel no doubt 
as to their ability to fill. 

The same spirit pervades every trade. The 
youth who shaves me is not a barber; he has 
only accepted this position until he has time to 

[ 172 ] 



CONTENTMENT 



do something better. The waiter who brings me 
my chop at a down-town restaurant would re- 
sign his place if he were requested to shave his 
flowing mustache, and is secretly studying law. 
I lose all patience with my countrymen as I 
think over it! Surely we are not such a race of 
snobs as not to recognize that a good barber is 
more to be respedted than a poor lawyer; that, 
as a French saying goes, // n'y a pas de sot metier. 
It is only the fool who is ashamed of his trade. 

But enough of preaching. I had intended — 
when I took up my pen to-day — to write on 
quite another form of this modern folly, this 
eternal struggle upward into circles for which the 
struggler is fitted neither by his birth nor his 
education; the above was to have been but a 
preface to the matter I had in mind, viz., "so- 
cial climbers," those scourges of modern society, 
the people whom no rebuffs will discourage and 
no cold shoulder chill, whose efforts have done 
so much to make our countrymen a byword 
abroad. 

As many philosophers teach that trouble only 
is positive, happiness being merely relative ; that 
in any case trouble is pretty equally distributed 
among the different conditions of mankind; that, 
excepting the destitute and physically afflid:ed, 
all God's creatures have a share of joy in their 
lives, would it not be more logical, as well as 
more conducive to the general good, if a little 
more were done to make the young contented 

[ 173 ] 



with their lot in life, instead of constantly sug- 
gesting to a race already prone to be unsettled, 
that nothing short of the top is worthy of an 
American citizen? 



[ 174] 



N^' 26 

The Climber 



THAT form of misplaced ambition, which 
is the subjed: of the preceding chapter, 
can only be regarded seriously when it 
occurs among simple and sincere people, who, 
however deluded, honestly believe that they are 
doing their duty to themselves and their families 
when they move heaven and earth to rise a few 
steps in the world. The moment we find ambi- 
tion taking a purely social form, it becomes ri- 
diculous. The aim is so paltry in comparison with 
the effort, and so out of proportion with the en- 
ergy exerted to attain it, that one can only laugh 
and wonder! Unfortunately, signs of this puerile 
spirit (peculiar to the last quarter of the nine- 
teenth century) can be seen on all hands and in 
almost every society. 

That any man or woman should make it the 
unique aim and objedl of existence to get into a 
certain "set," not from any hope of profit or 
benefit, nor from the belief that it is composed 
of brilliant and amusing people, but simply be- 
cause it passes for being exclusive and difficult 
of access, does at first seem incredible. 

That humble young painters or singers should 
long to know personally the great lights of their 
professions, and should strive to be accepted 
among them is easily understood, since the as- 

[ 175] 



WOI^LDLT TV^YS ^ "BTWt^rS 

pirants can reap but benefit, present and future, 
from such companionship. That a rising politi- 
cian should deem it all-important to be on 
friendly terms with the "bosses" is not aston- 
ishing, for those magnates have it in their power 
to make or mar his fortune. But in a milieu as 
fluctuating as any social circle must necessarily 
be, shading off on all sides and changing as con- 
stantly as light on water, the end can never be 
considered as achieved or the goal attained. 

Neither does any particular result accompany 
success, more substantial than the moral one 
which lies in self-congratulation. That, however, 
is enough for a climber if she is bitten with the 
"ascending" madness. (I say "she," because 
this form of ambition is more frequent among 
women, although by no means unknown to the 
sterner sex.) 

It amuses me vastly to sit in my corner and 
watch one of thcsQ^n-de-siecle diplomatists work 
out her little problem. She generally comes 
plunging into our city from outside, hot for 
conquest, making acquaintances right and left, 
indiscriminately; thus falling an easy prey to the 
wolves that prowl around the edges of society, 
waiting for just such lambs to devour. Her first 
entertainments are worth attending for she has 
ingeniously contrived to get together all the 
people she should have left out, and failed to 
attrad: the social lights and powers of the mo- 
ment. If she be a quick-witted lady, she soon 

[ 176] 



THE CLIMBE%^ 



sees the error of her ways and begins a process 
of "weeding'* — as difficult as it is unwise, each 
rejedled "weed*' instantly becoming an enemy 
for life, not to speak of the risk she, in her ig- 
norance, runs of mistaking for" detrimentals " the 
fines fleurs of the worldly parterre. Ah ! the way 
of the Climber is hard; she now begins to see 
that her path is not strewn with flowers. 

One tadful person of this kind, whose grad- 
ual "unfolding" was watched with much amuse- 
ment and wonder by her acquaintances, avoided 
all these errors by going in early for a "dear 
friend." Having, after mature reflection, chosen 
her guide among the most exclusive of the young 
matrons, she proceeded quietly to pay her court 
en regie. Flattering little notes, boxes of candy, 
and bunches of flowers were among the forms 
her devotion took. As a natural result, these two 
ladies became inseparable, and the most hermeti- 
cally sealed doors opened before the new arrival. 

A talent for music or adling is another aid. A 
few years ago an entire family were floated into 
the desired haven on the waves of the sister's 
voice, and one young couple achieved success by 
the husband's aptitude for games and sports. In 
the latter case it was the man of the family who 
did the work, dragging his wife up after him. A 
polo pony is hardly one's idea of a battle-horse, 
but in this case it bore its rider on to success. 

Once climbers have succeeded in installing 
themselves in the stronghold of their ambitions, 

[ 177 ] 



they become more exclusive than their new 
friends ever dreamed of being, and it tries one's 
self-restraint to hear these new arrivals deploring 
"the levelling tendencies of the age," or wonder- 
ing "how nice people can be beginning to call 
on those horrid So-and-Sos. Their father sold 
shoes, you know." This ultra-exclusiveness is 
not to be wondered at. The only attradion the 
circle they have just entered has for the climbers 
is its exclusiveness, and they do not intend that 
it shall lose its market value in their hands. 
Like Baudelaire, they believe that "it is only 
the small number saved that makes the charm 
of Paradise." Having spent hard cash in this in- 
vestment, they have every intention of getting 
their money's worth. 

In order to give outsiders a vivid impression 
of the footing on which they stand with the great 
of the world, all the women they have just met 
become Nellys and Jennys, and all the men Dicks 
and Freds — behind their backs, bien entendu — 
for Mrs. "Newcome" has not yet reached that 
point of intimacy which warrants using such ab- 
breviations diredlly to the owners. 

Another amiable weakness common to the 
climber is that of knowing everybody. No name 
can be mentioned at home or abroad but Parvenu 
happens to be on the most intimate terms with 
the owner,andwhen he is conversing, great names 
drop out of his mouth as plentifully as did the 
pearls from the pretty lips of the girl in the fairy 

[ 178] 



THE CLIMB E1^ 



story. All the world knows how such a gentle- 
man, being asked on his return from the East 
if he had seen "the Dardanelles," answered, 
"Oh, dear, yes! I dined with them several 
times!" thus settling satisfa6lorily his standing 
in the Orient! 

Climbing, like every other habit, soon takes 
possession of the whole nature. To abstain from 
it is torture. Napoleon, we are told, found it 
impossible to rest contented on his successes, 
but was impelled onward by a force stronger 
than his volition. In some such spirit the ambi- 
tious souls here referred to, after "the Conquest 
of America" and the discovery that the fruit of 
their struggles was not worth very much, victory 
having brought the inevitable satiety in its wake, 
sail away in search of new fields of adventure. 
They have long ago left behind the friends and 
acquaintances of their childhood. Relations they 
apparently have none, which accounts for the cu- 
rious phenomenon that a parvenu is never in 
mourning. As no friendships bind them to their 
new circle, the ties are easily loosened. Why 
should they care for one city more than for an- 
other, unless it offer more of the sport they love? 
This continent has become tame, since there is 
no longer any struggle, while over the sea vast 
hunting grounds and game worthy of their 
powder, form an irresistible temptation — old and 
exclusive societies to be besieged, and contests 
to be waged compared to which their American 

C 179 ] 



experiences are but light skirmishes. As the 
polo pony is supposed to pant for the fray, so 
the hearts of social conquerors warm within 
them at the prosped: of more brilliant vidlories. 
The pleasure of following them on their hunt- 
ing parties abroad will have to be deferred, so 
vast is the subje6t, so full of thrilling adventure 
and, alas ! also of humiliating defeat. 



[ i8o] 



N'- 27 

The Last of the Dandies 



So completely has the dandy disappeared 
from among us, that even the word has 
an old-time look (as if it had strayed out 
of some half-forgotten novel or "keepsake"), 
raising in our minds the pi6lure of a slender, 
clean-shaven youth, in very tight unmentionables 
strapped under his feet, a dark green frock-coat 
with a collar up to the ears and a stock whose 
folds cover his chest, butter-colored gloves, and 
a hat — oh! a hat that would colled: a crowd in 
two minutes in any neighborhood ! A gold-headed 
stick, and a quizzing glass, with a black ribbon 
an inch wide, complete the toilet. In such a rig 
did the swells of the last generation stroll down 
Pall Mall or drive their tilburys in the Bois. 

The recent illness of the Prince de Sagan has 
made a strange and sad impression in many cir- 
cles in Paris, for he has always been a favorite, 
and is the last surviving type of a now extind: 
species. He is the last Dandy! No understudy 
will be found to fill his role — the dude and the 
swell are whole generations away from the dandy, 
of which they are but feeble refledions — the 
comedy will have to be continued now, without 
its leading gentleman. With his head of silvery 
hair, his eye-glass and his wonderful waistcoats, 
he held the first place in the "high Hfe" of the 
French capital. [ 181 ] 



No first night or ball was complete without 
him, Sagan. The very mention of his name in 
their articles must have kept the wolf from the 
door of needy reporters. No debutante^ social or 
theatrical, felt sure of her success until it had 
received the hall-mark of his approval. When 
he assisted at a dress rehearsal, the adlors and the 
managers paid him more attention than Sarcey 
or Sardou, for he was known to be the real ar- 
biter of their fate. His word was law, the world 
bowed before it as before the will of an autocrat. 
Mature matrons received his dictates with the 
same reverence that the Old Guard evinced for 
Napoleon's orders. Had he not led them on to 
vidory in their youth? 

On the boulevards or at a race-course, he 
was the one person always known by sight and 
pointed out. "There goes Sagan!" He had be- 
come an institution. One does not know exadly 
how or why he achieved the position, which 
made him the most followed, flattered, and cop- 
ied man of his day. It certainly was unique! 

The Prince of Sagan is descended from 
Maurice de Saxe (the natural son of the King 
of Saxony and Aurora of Koenigsmark), who in 
his day shone brilliantly at the French court and 
was so madly loved by Adrienne Lecouvreur. 
From his great ancestor, Sagan inherited the 
title of Grand Duke of Courland (the estates 
have been absorbed into a neighboring empire). 
Nevertheless, he is still an R. H., and when 

[ 182 ] 



THE L^ST OF THE DANDIES 

crowned heads visit Paris they dine with him 
and receive him on a footing of equahty. He 
married a great fortune, and the daughter of 
the banker Selliere. Their house on the Es- 
planade des Invalides has been for years the 
centre of aristocratic life in Paris ; not the most 
exclusive circle, but certainly the gayest of this 
gay capital, and from the days of Louis Philippe 
he has given the keynote to the fast set. 

Oddly enough, he has always been a great 
favorite with the lower classes (a popularity 
shared by all the famous dandies of history). 
The people appear to find in them the person- 
ification of all aspirations toward the elegant 
and the ideal. Alcibiades, Buckingham, the Due 
de Richelieu, Lord Seymour, Comte d'Orsay, 
Brummel, Grammont-Caderousse, shared this 
favor, and have remained legendary chara6lers, 
to whom their disdain for everything vulgar, 
their worship of their own persons, and many 
costly follies gave an ephemeral empire. Their 
power was the more arbitrary and despotic in 
that it was only nominal and undefined, allow- 
ing them to rule over the fashions, the tastes, 
and the pastimes of their contemporaries with 
undivided sway, making them envied, obeyed, 
loved, but rarely overthrown. 

It has been asserted by some writers that 
dandies are necessary and useful to a nation 
(Thackeray admired them and pointed out that 
they have a most difficult and delicate role to 

[ 183 ] 



WO'E^L'DLr W^rS & "BYWAYS 

play, hence their rarity), and that these butter- 
flies, as one finds them in the novels of that 
day, the de Marsys, the Pelhams, the Maxime 
de Trailles, are indispensable to the perfedtion 
of society. It is a great misfortune to a country 
to have no dandies, those supreme virtuosos of 
taste and distindtion. Germany, which glories in 
Mozart and Kant, Goethe and Humboldt, the 
country of deep thinkers and brave soldiers, 
never had a great dandy, and so has remained 
behind England or France in all that constitutes 
the graceful side of life, the refinements of social 
intercourse, and the art of living. France will 
perceive too late, after he has disappeared, the 
loss she has sustained when this Prince, Grand 
Seigneur, has ceased to embellish by his presence 
her race-courses and "first nights." A reputation 
like his cannot be improvised in a moment, and 
he has no pupils. 

Never did the aristocracy of a country stand 
in greater need of such a representation, than in 
these days of tramcars and "fixed-price" restau- 
rants. An entire "art" dies with him. It has been 
whispered that he has not entirely justified his 
reputation, that the accounts of his exploits as 
a haut viveur have gained in the telling. Never- 
theless he dominated an epoch, rising above the 
tumultuous and levelling society of his day, a 
tardy Don Quixote, of the knighthood of pleas- 
ures, fetes ^ loves and prodigalities, which are no 
longer of our time. His great name, his grand 

[ 184] 



THE L^Sr OF THE DANDIES 

manner, his elderly graces, his serene careless- 
ness, made him a being by himself. No one will 
succeed this master of departed elegances. If he 
does not recover from his attack, if the paralysis 
does not leave that poor brain, worn out with 
doing nothing, we can honestly say that he is the 
last of his kind. 

An original and independent thinker has as- 
serted that civilizations, societies, empires, and 
republics go down to posterity typified for the 
admiration of mankind, each under the form of 
some hero. Emerson would have given a place 
in his Pantheon to Sagan. For it is he who sus- 
tained the traditions and became the type of that 
distinguished and frivolous society, which judged 
that serious things were of no importance, en- 
thusiasm a waste of time, literature a bore ; that 
nothing was interesting and worthy of occupy- 
ing their attention except the elegant distrac5lions 
that helped to pass their days — and nights! He 
had the merit (?) in these days of the practical 
and the commonplace, of preserving in his gra- 
cious person all the charming uselessness of a 
courtier in a country where there was no longer 
a court. 

What a strange sight it would be if this de- 
parting dandy could, before he leaves for ever 
the theatre of so many triumphs, take his place 
at some street corner, and review the shades of 
the companions his long life had thrown him 
with, the endless procession of departed belles 

[ 185] 



WO%^LT>Lr WdiYS & "BrfFt^rS 



and beaux, who, in their youth, had, under his 
rule, helped to didtate the fashions and lead the 
sports of a world. 



[ i86 ] 



N^' 28 

A Nation on the Wing 



ON being taken the other day through 
a large and costly residence, with the 
thoroughness that only the owner of a 
new house has the cruelty to inflid: on his vic- 
tims, not allowing them to pass a closet or an 
eledlric bell without having its particular use and 
convenience explained, forcing them to look up 
coal-slides, and down air-shafts and to visit every 
secret place, from the cellar to the fire-escape, 
I noticed that apeculiar arrangement of the rooms 
repeated itself on each floor, and several times on 
a floor. I remarked it to my host. 

"You observe it," he said, with a blush of 
pride, "it is my wife's idea! The truth is, my 
daughters are of a marrying age, and my sons 
starting out for themselves ; this house will soon 
be much too big for two old people to live in 
alone. We have planned it so that at any time 
it can be changed into an apartment house at a 
nominal expense. It is even wired and plumbed 
with that end in view!" 

This answer positively took my breath away. 
I looked at my host in amazement. It was hard 
to believe that a man past middle age, who after 
years of hardest toil could afford to put half a 
million into a house for himself and his children, 
and store it with beautiful things, would have 

[ 187] 



the courage to look so far into the future as to 
see all his work undone, his home turned to 
another use and himself and his wife afloat in 
the world without a roof over their wealthy old 
heads. 

Surely this was the Spirit of the Age in its 
purest expression, the more strikingly so that 
he seemed to feel pride rather than anything 
else in his ingenious combination. 

He liked the city he had built in well enough 
now, but nothing proved to him that he would 
like it later. He and his wife had lived in twenty 
cities since they began their brave fight with 
Fortune, far away in a little Eastern town. They 
had since changed their abode with each ascend- 
ing rung of the ladder of success, and beyond a 
faded daguerreotype or two of their children and 
a few modest pieces of jewelry, stored away in cot- 
ton, it is doubtful if they owned a single obje6t 
belonging to their early life. 

Another case occurs to me. Near the village 
where I pass my summers, there lived an elderly, 
childless couple on a splendid estate combin- 
ing everything a fastidious taste could demand. 
One fine morning this place was sold, the im- 
portant library divided between the village and 
their native city, the furniture sold or given 
away, — everything went; at the end the things 
no one wanted were made into a bon-fire and 
burned. 

A neighbor asking why all this was being 

[ i88 ] 



e/f N^TIOtH^ OtH^ THE WINQ 

done was told by the lady, "We were tired of it 
all and have decided to be 'Bohemians' for the 
rest of our lives/' This couple are now wander- 
ing about Europe and half a dozen trunks con- 
tain their belongings. 

These are, of course, extreme cases and must 
be taken for what they are worth ; nevertheless, 
they are straws showing which way the wind 
blows, signs of the times that he who runs may 
read. I do not run, but I often saunter up our 
principal avenue, and always find myself won- 
dering what will be the future of the splendid 
residences that grace that thoroughfare as it nears 
the Park ; the ascending tide of trade is already 
circling round them and each year sees one or 
more crumble away and disappear. 

The finer buildings may remain, turned into 
clubs or restaurants, but the greater part of the 
newer ones are so ill-adapted to any other use 
than that for which they are built that their future 
seems obscure. 

That fashion will flit away from its present 
haunts there can be little doubt; the city below the 
Park is sure to be given up to business, and even 
the fine frontage on that green space will sooner 
or later be occupied by hotels, if not stores; and 
he who builds with any belief in the permanency 
of his surroundings must indeed be of a hopeful 
disposition. 

A good lady occupying a delightful corner on 
this same avenue, opposite a one-story florist's 
shop, said: [ 189 ] 



" I shall remain here until they build across the 
way; then I suppose I shall have to move.** 

So after all the man who is contented to live 
in a future apartment house, may not be so very 
far wrong. 

A case of the opposite kind is that of a great 
millionaire, who, dying, left his house and its col- 
lections to his eldest son and his grandson after 
him, on the condition that they should continue 
to live in it. 

Here was an attempt to keep together a home 
with its memories and associations. What has 
been the result? The street that was a charming 
centre for residences twenty years ago has be- 
come a "slum;** the unfortunate heirs find them- 
selves with a house on their hands that they 
cannot live in and are forbidden to rent or sell. 
As a final result the will must in all probability 
be broken and the matter ended. 

Of course the reason for a great deal of this 
is the phenomenal growth of our larger cities. 
Hundreds of families who would gladly remain 
in their old homes are fairly pushed out of them 
by the growth of business. 

Everything has its limits and a time must 
come when our cities will cease to expand or when 
centres will be formed as in London or Paris, 
where generations may succeed each other in 
the same homes. So far, I see no indications of 
any such crystallization in this our big city; we 
seem to be condemned like the "Wandering 

[ 190 ] 



^ N^TIOD^ 03^ THE WINQ 

Jew" or poor little "Joe" to be perpetually 
"moving on." 

At a dinner of young people not long ago a 
Frenchman visiting our country, expressed his 
surprise on hearing a girl speak of " not remem- 
bering the house she was born in." Piqued by his 
manner the young lady answered: 

"We are twenty-four at this table. I do not 
believe there is one person here living in the 
house in which he or she was born." This asser- 
tion raised a murmur of dissent around the table; 
on a census being taken it proved, however, to 
be true. 

How can one exped:, under circumstances like 
these, to find any great resped: among young 
people for home life or the conservative side of 
existence? They are born as it were on the wing, 
and on the wing will they live. 

The conditions of life in this country, although 
contributing largely to such a state of affairs, 
must not be held, however, entirely responsible. 
Underlying our civilization and culture, there 
is still strong in us a wild nomadic strain inher- 
ited from a thousand generations of wandering 
ancestors, which breaks out so soon as man is 
freed from the restraint incumbent on bread- 
winning for his family. The moment there is 
wealth or even a modest income insured, comes 
the inclination to cut loose from the dull rou- 
tine of business and duty, returning instinctively 
to the migratory habits of primitive man. 

[ 191 ] 



\ 1 



We are not the only nation that has given it- 
self up to globe-trotting; it is strong in the 
English, in spite of their conservative education, 
and it is surprising to see the number of formerly 
stay-at-home French and Germans one meets 
wandering in foreign lands. 

In 1855, a Londoner advertised the plan he 
had conceived of taking some people over to 
visit the International Exhibition in Paris. For 
a fixed sum paid in advance he offered to pro- 
vide everything and ad: as courier to the party, 
and succeeded with the greatest difficulty in get- 
ting together ten people. From this modest be- 
ginning has grown the vast undertaking that 
to-day covers the globe with tourists, from the 
frozen seas where they "do" the midnight sun, 
to the deserts three thousand miles up the Nile. 

As I was returning a couple of years ago via 
Vienna from Constantinople, the train was filled 
with a party of our compatriots conduced by an 
agency of this kind — simple people of small 
means who, twenty years ago, would as soon 
have thought of leaving their homes for a trip 
in the East as they would of starting off in bal- 
loons en route for the inter-stellar spaces. 

I doubted at the time as to the amount of in- 
formation and appreciation they brought to bear 
on their travels, so I took occasion to draw one 
of the thin, unsmiling women into conversa- 
tion, asking her where they intended stopping 
next. 

[ 192 ] 



^ N^TIOO^ OU^ THE WINQ 

" At Buda-Pestli," she answered. I said insome 
amusement : 

" But that was Buda-Pesth we visited so care- 
fully yesterday." 

"Oh, was it/* she replied, without any visible 
change on her face, " I thought we had not got 
there yet." Apparently it was enough for her to 
be travelling; the rest was of little importance. 
Later in the day, when asked if she had visited 
a certain old city in Germany, she told me she 
had but would never go there again: "They 
gave us such poor coffee at the hotel." Again 
later in speaking to her husband, who seemed 
a trifle vague as to whether he had seen Nurem- 
berg or not, she said: 

" Why, you remember it very well ; it was there 
you bought those nice overshoes!" 

All of which left me with some doubts in my 
mind as to the cultivating influences of foreign 
travel on their minds. 

You cannot change a leopard's spots, neither 
can you alter the nature of a race, and one of 
the strongest charaderistics of the Anglo-Saxon, 
is the nomadic instind. How often one hears 
people say: 

" I am not going to sit at home and take care 
of my furniture. I want to see something of the 
world before I am too old." Lately, a sprightly 
maiden of uncertain years, just returned from 
a long trip abroad, was asked if she intended now 
to settle down. 

[ "^9^ ] 



"Settle down, indeed! I'm a butterfly and I 
never exped: to settle down." 

There is certainly food here for reflection. 
Why should we be more inclined to wander 
than our neighbors? Perhaps it is in a measure 
due to our nervous, restless temperament, which 
is itself the result of our climate; but whatever 
the cause is, inability to remain long in one place 
is having a most unfortunate influence on our 
social life. When everyone is on the move or 
longing to be, it becomes difficult to form any 
but the most superficial ties; strong friendships 
become impossible, the most intimate family re- 
lations are loosened. 

If one were of a speculative frame of mind 
and chose to take as the basis for a calculation 
the increase in tourists between 1855, when the 
ten pioneers started for Paris, and the number 
"personally conducted" over land and sea to- 
day, and then glance forward at what the future 
will be if this ratio of increase is maintained the 
result would be something too awful for words. 
For if ten have become a million in forty years, 
what will be the total in 1955? Nothing less than 
entire nations given over to sight-seeing, passing 
their lives and incomes in rushing aimlessly 
about. 

If the facilities of communication increase as 
they undoubtedly will with the demand, the 
prosped: becomes nearer the idea of a " Walpur- 
gis Night" than anything else. For the earth 

[ 194 ] 



c/f N^TIOD^ O^ THE WINQ 

and the sea will be covered and the air filled with 
every form of whirling, flying, plunging device 
to get men quickly from one place to another. 

Every human being on the globe will be fly- 
ing South for the cold months and North for 
the hot season. 

As personally condu6led tours have been so 
satisfactory, agencies will be started to lead us 
through all the stages of existence. Parents will 
subscribe on the birth of their children to have 
them personally condudled through life and 
everything explained as it is done at present in 
the galleries abroad; food, lodging and reading 
matter, husbands and wives will be provided by 
contrail, to be taken back and changed if unsat- 
isfactory, as the big stores do with their goods. 
Delightful prospeCt! Homes will become super- 
fluous, parents and children will only meet when 
their "tours" happen to cross each other. Our 
great-grandchildren will float through life freed 
from every responsibility and more perfectly 
independent than even that delightful dreamer, 
Bellamy, ventured to predict. 



[ 195] 



N'' 29 

Husks 



AMONG the Protestants driven from 
France by that astute and liberal- 
minded sovereign Louis XIV., were 
a colony of weavers, who as all the world knows, 
settled at Spitalfields in England, where their 
descendants weave silk to this day. 

On their arrival in Great Britain, before the 
looms could be set up and a market found for 
their industry, the exiles were reduced to the 
last extremity of destitution and hunger. Look- 
ing about them for anything that could be uti- 
lized for food, they discovered that the owners 
of English slaughter-houses threw away as worth- 
less, the tails of the cattle they killed. Like all 
the poor in France, these wanderers were excel- 
lent cooks, and knew that at home such caudal 
appendages were highly valued for the tender- 
ness and flavor of the meat. To the amazement 
and disgust of the English villagers, the new 
arrivals proceeded to colled this "refuse" and 
carry it home for food. As the first principle of 
French culinary art is the pot-au-feu, the tails 
were mostly converted into soup, on which the 
exiles thrived and feasted. 

Their neighbors, envious at seeing the de- 
spised French indulging daily in savory dishes, 
unknown to English palates, and tempted like 

[ 196 ] 



HUSKS 

"Jack's" giant by the smell of "fresh meat," 
began to inquire into the matter, and slowly 
realized how, in their ignorance, they had been 
throwing away succulent and delicate food. 
The news of this discovery gradually spreading 
through all classes, "ox-tail" became and has 
remained the national English soup. 

If this veracious tale could be twisted into a 
metaphor, it would serve marvellously to illus- 
trate the position of the entire Anglo-Saxon race, 
and especially that of their American descen- 
dants as regards the Latin peoples. For foolish 
prodigality and reckless, ignorant extravagance, 
however, we leave our English cousins far be- 
hind. 

Two American hotels come to my mind, as 
diiferent in their appearance and management 
as they are geographically asunder. Both are 
types and illustrations of the wilful waste that 
has recently excited Mr. Ian Maclaren's com- 
ment, and the woeful want (of good food) that 
is the result. At one, a dreary shingle construc- 
tion on a treeless island, oif our New England 
coast, where the ideas of the landlord and his 
guests have remained as unchanged and primi- 
tive as the island itself, I found on inquiry that 
all articles of food coming from the first table 
were thrown into the sea; and I have myself 
seen chickens hardly touched, rounds of beef, 
trays of vegetables, and every variety of cake 
and dessert tossed to the fish. 

[ 197 ] 



WO'R^LT>LT W^YS & "BTW^TS 

While we were having soups so thin and taste- 
less that they would have made a French house- 
wife blush, the ingredients essential to an ex- 
cellent "stock" were cast aside. The boarders 
were paying five dollars a day and appeared 
contented, the place was packed, the landlord 
coining money, so it was foolish to exped: any 
improvement. 

The other hotel, a vast caravansary in the 
South, where a fortune had been lavished in 
providing every modern convenience and luxury, 
was the "fad" of its wealthy owner. I had many 
talks with the manager during my stay, and came 
to realize that most of the wastefulness I saw 
around me was not his fault, but that of the 
public, to whose taste he was obliged to cater. 
At dinner, after receiving your order, the waiter 
would disappear for half an hour, and then bring 
your entire meal on one tray, the over-cooked 
meats stranded in lakes of coagulated gravy, the 
entrees cold and the ices warm. He had gener- 
ally forgotten two or three essentials, but to send 
back for them meant to wait another half-hour, 
as his other clients were clamoring to be served. 
So you ate what was before you in sulky disgust, 
and got out of the room as quickly as possi- 
ble. 

After one of these gastronomic races, being 
hungry, flustered, and suffering from indigestion, 
I asked mine host if it had never occurred to 
him to serve a table d'hote dinner (in courses) 

[ 198 ] 



HUSKS 

as is done abroad, where hundreds of people dine 
at the same moment, each dish being offered them 
in turn accompanied by its accessories. 

"Of course, I have thought of it," he an- 
swered. "It would be the greatest improvement 
that could be introduced into American hotel- 
keeping. No one knows better than I do how 
disastrous the present system is to all parties. 
Take as an example of the present way, the din- 
ner I am going to give you to-morrow, in honor 
of Christmas. Glance over this menu. You will 
see that it enumerates every costly and delicate 
article of food possible to procure and a long 
list of other dishes, the greater part of which 
will not even be called for. As no number of 
chefs could possibly oversee the proper prepa- 
ration of such a variety of meats and sauces, all 
will be carelessly cooked, and as you know by 
experience, poorly served. 

"People who exa6t useless variety," he added, 
"are sure in some way to be the sufferers; in 
their anxiety to try everything, they will get noth- 
ing worth eating. Yet that meal will cost me 
considerably more than my guests pay for their 
twenty-four hours' board and lodging. 

"Why do it, you ask? Because it is the cus- 
tom, and because it will be an advertisement. 
These bills of fare will be sown broadcast over 
the country in letters to friends and kept as sou- 
venirs. If, instead of all this senseless superfluity, 
I were allowed to give a table tThote meal to-mor- 

[ 199 ] 



WO'E^LT>Lr TV^rS & "BTJV^rS 

row, with the chef I have, I could provide an ex- 
quisite dinner, perfed: in every detail, served at 
little tables as deftly and silently as in a private 
house. I could also discharge half of my waiters, 
and charge two dollars a day instead of five dol- 
lars, and the hotel would become (what it has 
never been yet) a paying investment, so great 
would be the saving. 

"Only this morning," he continued, warming 
to his subjedl, *^ while standing in the dining- 
room, I saw a young man order and then send 
away half the dishes on the menu, A chicken 
was broiled for him and rejedted; a steak and an 
omelette fared no better. How much do you 
suppose a hotel gains from a guest like that? 

"The reason Americans put up with such poor 
viands in hotels is, that home cooking in this 
country is so rudimentary, consisting principally 
of fried dishes, and hot breads. So little is known 
about the proper preparation of food that to- 
morrow's dinner will appear to many as the ne 
plus ultra of delicate living. One of the charms 
of a hotel for people who live poorly at home, 
lies in this power to order expensive dishes they 
rarely or never see on their own tables. 

"To be served with a quantity of food that 
he has but little desire to eat is one of an Amer- 
ican citizen's dearest privileges, and a right he will 
most unwillingly relinquish. He may know as 
well as you and I do, that what he calls for 
will not be worth eating; that is of secondary 

[ 200 ] 



HUS KS 

importance, he has it before him, and is con- 
tented. 

"The hotel that attempted limiting the liberty 
of its guests to the extent of serving them a table 
d'hote dinner, would be emptied in a week. 

"A crowning incongruity, as most people are 
delighted to dine with friends, or at public func- 
tions, where the meal is invariably served a la 
russe (another name for a table d hote)^ and on 
these occasions are only too glad to have their 
menu chosen for them. The present way, how- 
ever, is a remnant of 'old times* and the aver- 
age American, with all his love of change and 
novelty, is very conservative when it comes to 
his table." 

What this manager did not confide to me, 
but what I discovered later for myself, was 
that to facilitate the service, and avoid confu- 
sion in the kitchens, it had become the custom 
at all the large and most of the small hotels in 
this country, to carve the joints, cut up the game, 
and portion out vegetables, an hour or two before 
meal time. The food, thus arranged, is placed in 
vast steam closets, where it simmers gayly for 
hours, in its own, and fifty other vapors. 

Any one who knows the rudiments of cook- 
ery, will recognize that with this system no viand 
can have any particular flavor, the partridges 
having a taste of their neighbor the roast beef, 
which in turn suggests the plum pudding it has 
been "chumming" with. 

[ 20I ] 



WO'E^LT>LY W^YS ^ ^TW^TS 

It is not alone in a hotel that we miss the good 
in grasping after the better. Small housekeeping 
is apparently run on the same lines. 

A young Frenchman, who was working in 
my rooms, told me in reply to a question regard- 
ing prices, that every kind of food was cheaper 
here than abroad, but the prejudice against cer- 
tain dishes was so strong in this country that 
many of the best things in the markets were 
never called for. Our nation is no longer in its 
"teens" and should cease to ad: like a foolish 
boy who has inherited (what appears to him) a 
limitless fortune; not for fear of his coming, Hke 
his prototype in the parable, to live on "husks" 
for he is doing that already, but lest like the dog 
of the fable, in grasping after the shadow of a 
banquet he miss the simple meal that is within 
his reach. 

One of the reasons for this deplorable state 
of affairs lies in the foolish education our girls 
receive. They learn so little housekeeping at 
home, that when married they are obliged to begin 
all over again, unless they prefer, like a majority 
of their friends, to let things go at the will and 
discretion of the "lady" below stairs. 

At both hotels I have referred to, the families 
of the men interested considered it beneath them 
to know what was taking place. The "daughter" 
of the New England house went semi-weekly 
to Boston to take violin lessons at ten dollars 
each, although she had no intention of becoming 

[ 202 ] 



HUSKS 

a professional, while the wife wrote poetry and 
ignored the hotel side of her life entirely. 

The "better half" of the Florida establish- 
ment hired a palace in Rome and entertained 
ambassadors. Hotels divided against themselves 
are apt to be establishments where you pay for 
riotous living and are served only with husks. 

We have many hard lessons ahead of us, and 
one of the hardest will be for our nation to learn 
humbly from the thrifty emigrants on our shores, 
the great art of utilizing the "tails" that are at 
this moment being so recklessly thrown away. 

As it is, in spite of markets overflowing with 
every fish, vegetable, and tempting viand, we 
continue to be the worst fed, most meagrely 
nourished of all the wealthy nations on the face 
of the earth. We have a saying (for an excellent 
reason unknown on the Continent) that Provi- 
dence provides us with food and the devil sends 
the cooks! It would be truer to say that the 
poorer the food resources of a nation, the more 
restricted the choice of material, the better the 
cooks; a small latitude when providing for the 
table forcing them to a hundred clever combina- 
tions and mysterious devices to vary the monot- 
ony of their cuisine and tempt a palate, by 
custom staled. 

Our heedless people, with great variety at 
their disposition, are unequal to the situation, 
wasting and discarding the best, and making ab- 
solutely nothing of their advantages. 

[ 203 ] 



If we were enjoying our prodigality by living 
on the fat of the land, there would be less rea- 
son to reproach ourselves, for every one has a 
right to live as he pleases. But as it is, our fool- 
ish prodigals are spending their substance, while 
eating the husks! 



[ ^04 ] 



N°' 30 

The Faubourg St. Germain 

THERE has been too much said and 
written in the last dozen years about 
breaking down the "great wall" behind 
which the aristocrats of the famous Faubourg, 
like the Celestials, their prototypes, have en- 
sconced themselves. The Chinese speak of out- 
siders as "barbarians." The French ladies refer 
to such unfortunates as being "beyond the pale." 
Almost all that has been written is arrant non- 
sense; that imaginary barrier exists to-day on as 
firm a foundation, and is guarded by sentinels as 
vigilant as when, forty years ago. Napoleon 
(third of the name) and his Spanish spouse 
mounted to its assault. 

Their repulse was a bitter humiliation to the 
parvenue Empress, whose resentment took the 
form (along with many other curious results) of 
opening the present Boulevard St. Germain, its 
line being intentionally carried through the 
heart of that quarter, teeming with historic 
"Hotels" of the old aristocracy, where beautiful 
constructions were mercilessly torn down to 
make way for the new avenue. The cajoleries 
which Eugenie first tried and the blows that 
followed were alike unavailing. Even her wor- 
ship of Marie Antoinette, between whom and 
herself she found imaginary resemblances, failed 

[ ^05 ] 



to warm the stony hearts of the proud old ladies, 
to whom it was as gall and wormwood to see a 
nobody crowned in the palace of their kings. 
Like religious communities, persecution only 
drew this old society more firmly together and 
made them stand by each other in their distress. 
When the Bois was remodelled by Napoleon 
and the lake with its winding drive laid out, the 
new Court drove of an afternoon along this 
water front. That was enough for the old swells ! 
They retired to the remote " AUee of the Aca- 
cias," and solemnly took their airing away from 
the bustle of the new world, incidentally set- 
ting a fashion that has held good to this day; the 
lakeside being now deserted, and the "Acacias'* 
crowded of an afternoon, by all that Paris holds 
of elegant and inelegant. 

Where the brilliant Second Empire failed, the 
Republic had little chance of success. With each 
succeeding year the "Old Faubourg" withdrew 
more and more into its shell, going so far, after 
the fall of MacMahon, as to change its " season " 
to the spring, so that the balls and fetes it gave 
should not coincide with the "official" enter- 
tainments during the winter. 

The next people to have a "shy" at the "Old 
Faubourg's" Gothic battlements were the Jews, 
who were victorious in a few light skirmishes 
and succeeded in capturing one or two illustri- 
ous husbands for their daughters. The wily 
Israelites, however, discovered that titled sons- 

[ 206 ] 



THE F^UBOURQ ST. GERM^ID^ 

in-law were expensive articles and often turned 
outunsatisfa6lorily5SO they quickly desisted. The 
English, the most practical of societies, have al- 
ways left the Faubourg alone. It has been re- 
served for our countrywomen to lay the most 
determined siege yet recorded to that untaken 
stronghold. 

It is a chara6leristic of the American temper- 
ament to be unable to see a closed door without 
developing an intense curiosity to know what is 
behind ; or to read " No Admittance to the Pub- 
lic" over an entrance without immediately de- 
termining to get inside at any price. So it is easy 
to understand the attraction an hermetically 
sealed society would have for our fair compa- 
triots. Year after year they have flung themselves 
against its closed gateways. Repulsed, they have 
retired only to form again for the attack, but 
are as far away to-day from planting their flag 
in that citadel as when they first began. It does 
not matter to them what is inside; there may be 
(as in this case) only mouldy old halls and a 
group of people with antiquated ideas and ways. 
It is enough for a certain type of woman to 
know that she is not wanted in an exclusive 
circle, to be ready to die in the attempt to get 
there. This point of view reminds one of Mrs. 
Snob's saying about a new arrival at a hotel : " I 
am sure she must be ^somebody' for she was so 
rude to me when I spoke to her;" and her an- 
swer to her daughter when the girl said (on arriv- 

[ 207 ] 



ing at a watering-place) that she had noticed a 
very nice family "who look as if they wanted to 
know us, Mamma:" 

"Then, my dear," replied Mamma Snob, 
"they certainly are not people we want to meet!" 

The men in French society are willing enough 
to make acquaintance with foreigners. You may 
see the youth of the Faubourg dancing at Ameri- 
can balls in Paris, or running over for occasional 
visits to this country. But when it comes to taking 
their women-kind with them, it is a different 
matter. Americans who have known well-born 
Frenchmen at school or college are surprised, 
on meeting them later, to be asked (cordially 
enough) to dine en gar^on at a restaurant, although 
their Parisian friend is married. An Englishman's 
or American's first word would be on a like oc- 
casion: 

"Come and dine with me to-night. I want 
to introduce you to my wife." Such an idea 
would never cross a Frenchman's mind! 

One American I know is a striking example 
of this. He was born in Paris, went to school 
and college there, and has lived in that city all his 
life. His sister married a French nobleman. Yet 
at this moment, in spite of his wealth, his charm- 
ing American wife, and many beautiful entertain- 
ments, he has not one warm French friend, or 
the entree on a footing of intimacy to a single 
Gallic house. 

There is no analogy between the English aris- 

[ 208 ] 



THE F^UBOURQ ST, GERM^IU^ 

tocracy and the French nobility, except that they 
are both antiquated institutions; the Enghsh is 
the more harmful on account of its legislative 
power, the French is the more pretentious. The 
House of Lords is the most open club in Lon- 
don, the payment of an entrance-fee in the shape 
of a check to a party fund being an all-sufficient 
sesame. In France, one must be born in the 
magic circle. The spirit of the Emigration of 
1793 is not yet extind:. The nobles live in their 
own world (how expressive the word is, seeming 
to exclude all the rest of mankind), pining after 
an impossible restauration^ alien to the present 
day, holding aloof from politics for fear of com- 
ing in touch with the masses, with whom they 
pride themselves on having nothing in common. 

What leads many people astray on this sub- 
jed: is that there has formed around this ancient 
society a circle composed of rich "outsiders," who 
have married into good families; and of eccentric 
members of the latter, who from a love of excite- 
ment or for interested motives have broken away 
from their traditions. Newly arrived Americans 
are apt to mistake this "world " for the real thing. 
Into this circle it is not difficult for foreigners who 
are rich and anxious to see something of life to 
gain admission. To be received by the ladies of 
this outer circle, seems to our compatriots to be 
an achievement, until they learn the real stand- 
ing of their new acquaintances. 

No gayer houses, however, exist than those of 
[ 209 ] 



the new set. At their city or country houses, they 
entertain continually, and they are the people one 
meets toward five o'clock, on the grounds of the 
Polo Club, in the ^o\s,2itfetes given by the Island 
Club of Puteaux, attending the race meetings, or 
dining at American houses. As far as amusement 
and fun go, one might seek much further and fare 
worse. 

It is very, very rare that foreigners get beyond 
this circle. Occasionally there is a marriage be- 
tween an American girl and some Frenchman of 
high rank. In these cases the girl is, as it were, 
swallowed up. Her family see little of her, she 
rarely appears in general society, and, little by 
little, she is lost to her old friends and relations. 
I know of several cases of this kind where it is 
to be doubted if a dozen Americans outside of the 
girls' connedlions know that such women exist. 
The fall in rents and land values has made the 
French aristocracy poor; it is only by the great- 
est economy (and it never entered into an Ameri- 
can mind to conceive of such economy as is 
practised among them) that they succeed in hold- 
ing on to their historical chateaux or beautiful city 
residences ; so that pride plays a large part in the 
isolation in which they live. 

The fad: that no titles are recognized officially 
by the French government (the most they can 
obtain being a " courtesy "recognition) has placed 
these people in a singularly false position. An 
American girl who has married a Duke is a 

[ 2IO ] 



THE F^UBOURg ST. GERM^I3^ 

good deal astonished to find that she is legally 
only plain "Madame So and So;'* that when 
her husband does his military service there is no 
trace of the high-sounding title to be found in 
his official papers. Some years ago, a colonel was 
rebuked because he allowed the Due d'Alengon 
to be addressed as "Monseigneur" by the other 
officers of his regiment. This ought to make am- 
bitious papas refledlj when they treat themselves 
to titled sons-in-law. They should at least try 
and get an article recognized by the law. 

Most of what is written here is perfectly well 
known to resident Americans in Paris, and has 
been the cause of gradually splitting that once 
harmonious settlement into two perfedly distind: 
camps, between which no love is lost. The mem- 
bers of one, clinging to their countrymen's creed 
of having the best or nothing, have been con- 
tented to live in France and know but few 
French people, entertaining among themselves 
and marrying their daughters to Americans. The 
members of the other, who have "gone in" for 
French society, take what they can get, and, on 
the whole, lead very jolly lives. It often happens 
(perhaps it is only a coincidence) that ladies who 
have not been very successful at home are partial 
to this circle, where they easily find guests for 
their entertainments and the recognition their 
souls long for. 

What the future of the "Great Faubourg" 
will be, it is hard to say. All hope of a possible 

[211 ] 



restauration appears to be lost. Will the proud 
necks that refused to bend to the Orleans dy- 
nasty or the two "empires" bow themselves to 
the republican yoke? It would seem as if it must 
terminate in this way, for everything in this world 
must finish. But the end is not yet; one cannot 
help feeling sympathy for people who are trying 
to live up to their traditions and be true to such 
immaterial idols as "honor" and "family" in 
this discouragingly material age, when everything 
goes down before the Golden Calf. Nor does one 
wonder that men who can trace their ancestors 
back to the Crusades should hesitate to ally 
themselves with the last rich 'parvenu who has 
raised himself from the gutter, or resent the ar- 
dor with which the latest importation of Ameri- 
can ambition tries to chum with them and push 
its way into their life. 



[ 212 ] 



Men's Manners 



NOTHING makes one feel so old as to 
wake up suddenly, as it were, and real- 
ize that the conditions of life have 
changed, and that the standards you knew and 
accepted in your youth have been raised or low- 
ered. The young men you meet have somehow 
become uncomfortably polite, offering you arm- 
chairs in the club, and listening with a shade of 
deference to your stories. They are of another 
generation; their ways are hot your ways, nor 
their ambitions those you had in younger days. 
One is tempted to look a little closer, to analyze 
what the change is, in what this subtle difference 
consists, which you feel between your past and 
their present. You are surprised and a little angry 
to discover that, among other things, young men 
have better manners than were general among 
the youths of fifteen years ago. 

Anyone over forty can remember three epochs 
in men's manners. When I was a very young 
man, there were still going about in society a 
number of gentlemen belonging to what was 
reverently called the "old school," who had evi- 
dently taken Sir Charles Grandison as their model, 
read Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son with 
attention, and been brought up to commence let- 
ters to their fathers, "Honored Parent," signing 

[ 213 ] 



themselves" Your humble servant and respectful 
son." There are a few such old gentlemen still to 
be found in the more conservative clubs, where 
certain windows are tacitly abandoned to these 
elegant-mannered fossils. They are quite harm- 
less unless you happen to find them in a remin- 
iscent mood, when they are apt to be a little 
tiresome; it takes their rusty mental machinery 
so long to get working! Washington possesses a 
particularly fine colled:ion among the retired 
army and navy officers and ex-officials. It is a 
fa6t well known that no one drawing a pension 
ever dies. 

About 1875, a new generation with new man- 
ners began to make its appearance. A number 
of its members had been educated at English 
universities, and came home burning to upset 
old ways and teach their elders how to live. They 
broke away from the old clubs and started smaller 
and more exclusive circles among themselves, 
principally in the country. This was a period of 
bad manners. True to their English model, they 
considered it "good form" to be uncivil and to 
make no effiDrt towards the general entertain- 
ment when in society. Not to speak more than 
a word or two during a dinner party to either 
of one's neighbors was the supreme chic. As a 
revolt from the twice-told tales of their elders 
they held it to be "bad form" to tell a story, 
no matter how fresh and amusing it might be. 
An unfortunate outsider who ventured to tell 

C 2H] 



MEN'S MANNERS 



one in their club was crushed by having his tale 
received in dead silence. When it was finished 
one of the party would "ring the bell/' and the 
circle order drinks at the expense of the man 
who had dared to amuse them. How the pro- 
fessional story-teller must have shuddered — he 
whose story never was ripe until it had been 
told a couple of hundred times, and who would 
produce a certain tale at a certain course as 
surely as clock-work. 

That the story-telling type was a bore, I 
grant. To be grabbed on entering your club and 
obliged to listen to Smith's last, or to have the 
conversation after dinner monopolized by Jones 
and his eternal " Speaking of coffee, I remember 
once," etc., added an additional hardship to ex- 
istence. But the opposite pose, which became the 
fashion among the reformers, was hardly less 
wearisome. To sit among a group of perfectly 
mute men, with an occasional word dropping 
into the silence like a stone in a well, was surely 
little better. 

A girl told me she had once sat through an 
entire cotillion with a youth whose only remark 
during the evening had been (after absorbed 
contemplation of the articles in question)," How 
do you like my socks?" 

On another occasion my neighbor at table said 
to me: 

"I think the man on my right has gone to 
sleep. He is sitting with his eyes closed!" She 



was mistaken. He was pradlising his newly ac- 
quired "repose of manner," and living up to the 
standard of his set. 

The model young man of that period had an- 
other offensive habit, his pose of never seeing 
you, which got on the nerves of his elders to a 
considerable extent. If he came into a drawing- 
room where you were sitting with a lady, he 
would shake hands with her and begin a con- 
versation, ignoring your existence, although 
you may have been his guest at dinner the night 
before, or he yours. This was also a tenet of his 
creed borrowed from trans-Atlantic cousins, 
who, by the bye, during the time I speak of, 
found America, and especially our Eastern 
states, a happy hunting-ground, — all the clubs, 
country houses, and society generally opening 
their doors to the "sesame" of English nation- 
ality. It took our innocent youths a good ten 
years to discover that there was no reciprocity 
in the arrangement; it was only in the next 
epoch (the last of the three referred to) that our 
men recovered their self-resped:, and assumed 
towards foreigners in general the attitude of po- 
lite indifference which is their manner to us when 
abroad. Nothing could have been more provin- 
cial and narrow than the ideas of our "smart" 
men at that time. They congregated in little 
cliques, huddling together in public, and crack- 
ing personal old jokes; but were speechless with 
mauvaise honte if thrown among foreigners or into 

[216 ] 



MEN'S MANNERS 



other circles of society. All this is not to be won- 
dered at considering the amount of their general 
education and reading. One charming little cus- 
tom then greatly in vogue among our jeunesse 
doree'W2iS to remain at a ball, after the other guests 
had retired, get tipsy, and then break anything 
that came to hand. It was so amusing to throw 
china, glass, or valuable plants, out of the win- 
dows, to strip to the waist and box or bait the 
tired waiters. 

I look at the boys growing up around me with 
sincere admiration, they are so superior to their 
predecessors in breeding, in civility, in deference 
to older people, and in a thousand other little 
ways that mark high-bred men. The stray Eng- 
lishman, of no particular standing at home no 
longer finds our men eager to entertain him, to 
put their best "hunter" at his disposition, to 
board, lodge, and feed him indefinitely, or make 
him honorary member of all their clubs. It is a 
constant source of pleasure to me to watch this 
younger generation, so plainly do I see in them 
the influence of their mothers — women I knew 
as girls, and who were so far ahead of their bro- 
thers and husbands in refinement and culture. 
To have seen these girls marry and bring up 
their sons so well has been a satisfadlion and a 
compensation for many disillusions. Woman's 
influence will always remain the strongest lever 
that can be brought to bear in raising the tone 
of a family; it is impossible not to see about 

[ ^17 ] 



these young men a refledlion of what we found 
so charming in their mothers. One despairs at 
times of humanity, seeing vulgarity and snob- 
bishness riding triumphantly upward; but where 
the tone of the younger generation is as high as 
I have lately found it, there is still much hope 
for the future. 



[ 218 ] 



N"' 32 

An Ideal Hostess 



THE saying that "One-half of the world 
ignores how the other half lives" re- 
ceived for me an additional confirma- 
tion this last week, when I had the good fortune 
to meet again an old friend, now for some years 
retired from the stage, where she had by her 
charm and beauty, as well as by her singing, held 
all the Parisian world at her pretty feet. 

Our meeting was followed on her part by an 
invitation to take luncheon with her the next 
day, "to meet a few friends, and talk over old 
times." So half-past twelve (the invariable hour 
for the "second breakfast," in France) the fol- 
lowing day found me entering a shady drawing- 
room, where a few people were sitting in the 
cool half-light that strayed across from a canvas- 
covered balcony furnished with plants and low 
chairs. Beyond one caught a glimpse of perhaps 
the gayest picture that the bright city of Paris 
offers, — the sweep of the Boulevard as it turns 
to the Rue Royale, the flower market, gay with 
a thousand colors in the summer sunshine, while 
above all the color and movement, rose, cool 
and gray, the splendid colonnade of the Mad- 
eleine. The rattle of carriages, the roll of the 
heavy omnibuses and the shrill cries from the 
street below floated up, softened into a harmoni- 

[ 219 ] 



WO'F^LT>Lr W^rS iff "BTTF^jrS 

ous murmur that in no way interfered with our 
conversation, and is sweeter than the finest music 
to those who love their Paris. 

Five or six rooms ^;^j/^/V<? opening on the street, 
and as many more on a large court, formed the 
apartment, where everything betrayed the artiste 
and the singer. The walls, hung with silk or tap- 
estry, held a colled:ion of original drawings and 
paintings, a fortune in themselves; the dozen 
portraits of our hostess in favorite roles were by 
men great in the art world; a couple of pianos 
covered with well-worn music and numberless 
photographs signed with names that would have 
made an autograph-fiend's mouth water. 

After a gracious, cooing welcome, more whis- 
pered than spoken, I was presented to the guests 
I did not know. Before this ceremony was well 
over, two maids in black, with white caps, opened 
a door into the dining-room and announced 
luncheon. As this is written on the theme that 
"people know too little how their neighbors live," 
I give the menu. It may amuse my readers and 
serve, perhaps, as a little object lesson to those 
at home who imagine that quantity and not 
quality is of importance. 

Our gracious hostess had earned a fortune in 
her profession (and I am told that two chefs 
preside over her simple meals) ; so it was not a 
spirit of economy which didated this simplicity. 
At first, hors d^ceuvres were served, — all sorts of 
tempting little things, — very thin slices of ham, 

[ 220 ] 



^N IDE^L HOSTESS 

spiced sausages, olives and caviar, and eaten — 
not merely passed and refused. Then came the 
one hot dish of the meal. "One!" I think I hear 
my reader exclaim. Yes, my friend, but that one 
was a marvel in its way. Chicken a respagnoky 
boiled, and buried in rice and tomatoes cooked 
whole — a dish to be dreamed of and remembered 
in one's prayers and thanksgivings! After at 
least two helpings each to this chef-d^ceuvre^ cold 
larded fillet and a meat pate were served with the 
salad. Then a bit of cheese, a beaten cream of 
chocolate, fruit, and bon-bons. For a drink we 
had the white wine from which champagne is 
made (by a chemical process and the addition 
of many injurious ingredients) ; in other words, 
a pure brut champagne with just a suggestion 
of sparkle at the bottom of your glass. All the 
party then migrated together into the smoking- 
room for cigarettes, coffee, and a tiny glass of 
liqueur. 

These details have been given at length, not 
only because the meal seemed to me, while I 
was eating it, to be worthy of whole columns of 
print, but because one of the besetting sins of 
our dear land is to serve a profusion of food no 
one wants and which the hostess would never 
have dreamed of ordering had she been alone. 

Nothing is more wearisome than to sit at table 
and see course after course, good, bad, and in- 
different, served, after you have eaten what you 
want. And nothing is more vulgar than to serve 

[ 221 ] 



them; for either a guest refuses a great deal of 
the food and appears uncivil, or he must eat, 
and regret it afterwards. If we ask people to a 
meal, it should be to such as we eat, as a general 
thing, ourselves, and such as they would have 
at home. Otherwise it becomes ostentation and 
vulgarity. Why should one be expeded to eat 
more than usual because a friend has been nice 
enough to ask one to take one's dinner with 
him, instead of eating it alone? It is the being 
among friends that tempts, not the food; the 
fa6t that skilful waiters have been able to serve 
a dozen varieties of fish, flesh, and fowl during 
the time you were at table has added little to 
any one's pleasure. On the contrary! Half the 
time one eats from pure absence of mind, a num- 
ber of most injurious mixtures and so prepares 
an awful to-morrow and the foundation of many 
complicated diseases. 

I see Smith and Jones daily at the club, where 
we dine cheerfully together on soup, a cut of 
the joint, a dessert, and drink a pint of claret. 
But if either Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Jones asks me 
to dinner, we have eight courses and half as 
many wines, and Smith will say quite gravely 
to me, "Try this '75 'Perrier Jouet,'" as if he 
were in the habit of drinking it daily. It makes 
me smile, for he would as soon think of ordering 
a bottle of that wine at the club as he would 
think of ordering a flask of nectar. 

But to return to our "mutton." As we had 
[ 222 ] 



^N IDE^L HOSTESS 

none of us eaten too much (and so become di- 
gesting machines), we were cheerful and sprightly. 
A little music followed and an author repeated 
some of his poetry. I noticed that during the 
hour before we broke up our hostess contrived 
to have a little talk with each of her guests, 
which she made quite personal, appearing for the 
moment as though the rest of the world did not 
exist for her, than which there is no more subtle 
flattery, and which is the ad: of a well-bred and 
appreciative woman. Guests cannot be treated 
en masse any more than food; to ask a man to 
your house is not enough. He should be made 
to feel, if you wish him to go away with a pleas- 
ant remembrance of the entertainment, that his 
presence has in some way added to it and been 
a personal pleasure to his host. 

A good soul that all New York knew a few 
years ago, whose entertainments were as though 
the street had been turned into a salon for the 
moment, used to go about arnong her guests 
saying, "There have been one hundred and 
seventy-five people here this Thursday, ten 
more than last week," with such a satisfied smile, 
that you felt that she had little left to wish for, 
and found yourself wondering just which number 
you represented in her mind. When you entered 
she must have murmured a numeral to herself 
as she shook your hand. 

There is more than one house in New York 
where I have grave doubts if the host and host- 

[ 223 ] 



ess are quite sure of my name when I dine there; 
after an abstradtedwelcome, they rarely put them- 
selves out to entertain their guests. Black coats 
and evening dresses alternate in pleasing per- 
spedive down the long line of their table. Their 
gold plate is out, and the chef has been allowed 
to work his own sweet will, so they give them- 
selves no further trouble. 

Why does not some one suggest to these 
amphitrions to send fifteen dollars in prettily 
monogrammed envelopes to each of their friends, 
requesting them to expend it on a dinner. The 
compliment would be quite as personal, and 
then the guests might make up little parties to 
suit themselves, which would be much more 
satisfactory than going "in" with some one 
chosen at hazard from their host's visiting list, 
and less fatiguing to that gentleman and his 
family. 



[ 224 ] 



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U ^JW aH^W 4JW AU/W WW JM^W JH^W 4^ W JM^W JM^W JH^ 

*T^«»^IWJK«"^1» in*"^?* »l^."»TI* »I^-"^TI* ST^—'TI* «r^««^TI» *r^-«»'TT» «T^— ^TT* »I^»»tT» *T^»^T|» 

The Introducer 



WE all suffer more or less from the 
perennial "freshness" of certain ac- 
quaintances — tiresome people whom 
a misguided Providence has endowed with over- 
flowing vitality and an irrepressible love of their 
fellowmen, and who^ not content with looking 
on life as a continual "spree," insist on making 
others happy in spite of themselves. Their name 
is legion and their presence ubiquitous, but they 
rarely annoy as much as when disguised under 
the mask of the "Introducer." In his clutches 
one is helpless. It is impossible to escape from 
such philanthropic tyranny. He, in his freshness, 
imagines that to present human beings to each 
other is his mission in this world and moves 
through life making these platonic unions, oblivi- 
ous, as are other match-makers, of the misery he 
creates. 

If you are out for a quiet stroll, one of these 
genial gentlemen is sure to come bounding up, 
and without notice or warning present you to 
his "friend," — the greater part of the time a man 
he has met only an hour before, but whom he 
endows out of the warehouse of his generous 
imagination with several talents and all the vir- 
tues. In order to make the situation just one 

[ 225 ] 



shade more uncomfortable, this kindly bore pro- 
ceeds to sing a hymn of praise concerning both 
of you to your faces, adding, in order that you 
may both feel quite friendly and pleasant: 

"I know you two will fancy each other, you 
are so alike," — a phrase neatly calculated to nip 
any conversation in the bud. You detest the 
unoffending stranger on the spot and would 
like to kill the bore. Not to appear an absolute 
brute you struggle through some commonplace 
phrases, discovering the while that your new 
acquaintance is no more anxious to know you, 
than you are to meet him; that he has not the 
slightest idea who you are, neither does he de- 
sire to find out. He classes you with the bore, 
and his one idea, like your own, is to escape. 
So that the only result of the Introducer's good- 
natured interference has been to make two fel- 
low-creatures miserable. 

A friend was telling me the other day of the 
martyrdom he had suffered from this class. He 
spoke with much feeling, as he is the soul of 
amiability, but somewhat short-sighted and af- 
fli6led with a hopelessly bad memory for faces. 
For the last few years, he has been in the habit 
of spending one or two of the winter months in 
Washington, where his friends put him up at 
one club or another. Each winter on his first 
appearance at one of these clubs, some kindly 
disposed old fogy is sure to present him to a 
circle of the members, and he finds himself in- 

[ 226 ] 



THE INTRODUCE'R^ 



discriminately shaking hands with Judges and 
Colonels. As little or no conversation follows 
these introdudlions to fix the individuality of 
the members in his mind, he unconsciously cuts 
two-thirds of his newly acquired circle the next 
afternoon, and the following winter, after a ten- 
months' absence, he innocently ignores the other 
third. So hopelessly has he offended in this way, 
that last season, on being presented to a club 
member, the latter peevishly blurted out: 

"This is the fourth time I have been intro- 
duced to Mr. Blank, but he never remembers 
me," and glared coldly at him, laying it all down 
to my friend's snobbishness and to the airs of a 
New Yorker when away from home. If instead 
of being sacrificed to the introducer's mistaken 
zeal my poor friend had been left quietly to him- 
self, he would in good time have met the people 
congenial to him and avoided giving offence to 
a number of kindly gentlemen. 

This introducing mania takes an even more 
aggressive form in the hostess, who imagines 
that she is lacking in hospitality if any two peo- 
ple in her drawing-room are not made known to 
each other. No matter how interested you may 
be in a chat with a friend, you will see her bear- 
ing down upon you, bringing in tow the one 
human being you have carefully avoided for 
years. Escape seems impossible, but as a forlorn 
hope you fling yourself into conversation with 
your nearest neighbor, trying by your absorbed 

[ 227 ] 



manner to ward off the calamity. In vain! With 
a tap on your elbow your smiling hostess intro- 
duces you and, having spoiled your afternoon, 
flits off in search of other prey. 

The question of introductions is one on which 
it is impossible to lay down any fixed rules. There 
must constantly occur situations where one's ad:s 
must depend upon a kindly consideration for 
other people's feelings, which after all, is only 
another name for tad:. Nothing so plainly shows 
the breeding of a man or woman as skill in solv- 
ing problems of this kind without giving offence. 

Foreigners, with their greater knowledge of 
the world, rarely fall into the error of indiscrimi- 
nate introducing, appreciating what a presenta- 
tion means and what obligations it entails. The 
English fall into exadly the contrary error from 
ours, and carry it to absurd lengths. Starting 
with the assumption that everybody knows 
everybody, and being aware of the general 
dread of meeting "detrimentals," they avoid 
the difficulty by making no introdudlions. This 
may work well among themselves, but it is trying 
to a stranger whom they have been good enough 
to ask to their tables, to sit out the meal between 
two people who ignore his presence and con- 
verse across him; for an Englishman will expire 
sooner than speak to a person to whom he has 
not been introduced. 

The French, with the marvellous tad: that 
has for centuries made them the law-givers on 

[ "8 ] 



THE INTR0DUCE1{^ 



all subjeds of etiquette and breeding, have an- 
other way of avoiding useless introductions. They 
assume that two people meeting in a drawing- 
room belong to the same world and so chat 
pleasantly with those around them. On leaving 
the salon the acquaintance is supposed to end, 
and a gentleman who should at another time or 
place bow or speak to the lady who had offered 
him a cup of tea and talked pleasantly to him 
over it at a friend's reception, would commit a 
gross breach of etiquette. 

I was once present at a large dinner given in 
Cologne to the American Geographical Society. 
No sooner was I seated than my two neighbors 
turned towards me mentioning their names and 
waiting for me to do the same. After that the 
conversation flowed on as among friends. This 
custom struck me as exceedingly well-bred and 
calculated to make a foreigner feel at his ease. 

Among other curious types, there are people 
so constituted that they are unhappy if a single 
person can be found in the room to whom they 
have not been introduced. It does not matter 
who the stranger may be or what chance there 
is of finding him congenial. They must be pre- 
sented; nothing else will content them. If you 
are chatting with a friend you feel a pull at your 
sleeve, and in an audible aside, they ask for an 
introduction. The aspirant will then bring up 
and present the members of his family who hap- 
pen to be near. After that he seems to be at ease, 

[ 229 ] 



and having absolutely nothing to say will soon 
drift off. Our public men suffer terribly from 
promiscuous introductions; it is a part of a polit- 
ical career; a good memory for names and faces 
and a cordial manner under fire have often gone a 
long way in floating a statesman on to success. 
Demand, we are told, creates supply. During 
a short stay in a Florida hotel last winter, I no- 
ticed a curious little man who looked like a cross 
between a waiter and a musician. As he spoke 
to me several times and seemed very officious, 
I asked who he was. The answer was so grotesque 
that I could not believe my ears. I was told that 
he held the position of official "introducer," or 
master of ceremonies, and that the guests under 
his guidance became known to each other, danced, 
rode, and married to their own and doubtless to 
his satisfaction. The further west one goes the 
more pronounced this mania becomes. Every- 
body is introduced to everybody on all imagin- 
able occasions. If a man asks you to take a 
drink, he presents you to the bar-tender. If he 
takes you for a drive, the cab-driver is intro- 
duced. "Boots" makes you acquainted with the 
chambermaid, and the hotel proprietor unites 
you in the bonds of friendship with the clerk 
at the desk. Intercourse with one's fellows be- 
comes one long debauch of introduction. In this 
country where every liberty is respeCted, it is a 
curious faCt that we should be denied the most 
important of all rights, that of choosing our ac- 
quaintances. [ 230 1 



A Question and an Answer 



DEAR IDLER: 

I HAVE been reading your articles in The Evening 
Post. They are really most amusing I Tou do know 
such a lot about people and things^ that I am tempted 
to write and ask you a question on a subjeSi that is puz- 
zling me. What is it that is necessary to succeed — socially? 
There! It is out! Please do not laugh at me. Such funny 
people get on and such clever^ agreeable onesfail^ that I am 
all at sea. Now do be nice and answer me^ and you will 
have a very grateful 

Admirer. 

The abo\^e note, in a rather juvenile feminine 
hand, and breathing a faint perfume of violette 
de Parmej was part of the morning's mail that I 
found lying on my desk a few days ago, in de- 
lightful contrast to the bills and advertisements 
which formed the bulk of my correspondence. 
It would suppose a stoicism greater than I pos- 
sess, not to have felt a thrill of satisfadion in its 
perusal. There was, then, some one who read 
with pleasure what I wrote, and who had been 
moved to consult me on a question (evidently 
to her) of importance. I instantly decided to do 
my best for the edification of my fair correspond- 
ent (for no doubt entered my head that she was 
both young and fair), the more readily because 
thatvery question had frequently presented itself 
to my own mind on observing the very capri- 

[ 231 ] 



cious choice of Dame "Fashion** in the distri- 
bution of her favors. 

That there are people who succeed brilHantly 
and move from success to success, amid an ap- 
plauding crowd of friends and admirers, while 
others, apparently their superiors in every way, 
are distanced in the race, is an undeniable fa6t. 
You have but to glance around the circle of 
your acquaintances and relations to be convinced 
of this anomaly. To a refleding mind the ques- 
tion immediately presents itself. Why is this? 
General society is certainly cultivated enough to 
appreciate intelligence and superior endowments. 
How then does it happen that the social favor- 
ites are so often lacking in the qualities which 
at a first glance would seem indispensable to 
success? 

Before going any further let us stop a mo- 
ment, and look at the subje6l from another side, 
for it is more serious than appears to be on the 
surface. To be loved by those around us, to stand 
well in the world, is certainly the most legitimate 
as well as the most common of ambitions, as well 
as the incentive to most of the industry and per- 
severance in life. Aside from science, which is 
sometimes followed for itself alone, and virtue, 
which we are told looks for no other reward, the 
hope which inspires a great deal of the persistent 
efforts we see, is generally that of raising one's 
self and those one loves by one's efforts into a 
sphere higher than where cruel fate had placed 

[ 232 ] 



^ QUESTION JIND ^N ANSWER 

them ; that they, too, may take their place in the 
sunshine and enjoy the good things of Hfe. This 
ambition is often purely disinterested; a life of 
hardest toil is cheerfully borne, with the hope 
(for sole consolation) that dear ones will profit 
later by all the work, and live in a circle the pa- 
tient toiler never dreams of entering. Surely he 
is a stern moralist who would deny this satisfaction 
to the breadwinner of a family. 

There are doubtless many higher motives in 
life, more elevated goals toward which strug- 
gling humanity should strive. If you examine 
the average mind, however, you will be pretty 
sure to find that success is the touchstone by 
which we judge our fellows and what, in our 
hearts, we admire the most. That is not to be 
wondered at, either, for we have done all we can 
to implant it there. From a child's first opening 
thought, it is impressed upon him that the great 
objedt of existence is to succeed. Did a parent 
ever tell a child to try and stand last in his 
class ? And yet humility is a virtue we admire in 
the abstrad. Are any of us willing to step aside 
and see our inferiors pass us in the race? That 
is too much to ask of poor humanity. Were 
other and higher standards to be accepted, the 
structure of civilization as it exists to-day would 
crumble away and the great machine run down. 

In returning to my correspondent and her 
perfectly legitimate desire to know the road to 
success, we must realize that to a large part of 

[ '^Z'^ ] 



the world social success is the only kind they 
understand. The great inventors and benefadlors 
of mankind live too far away on a plane by 
themselves to be the objedl of jealousy to any 
but a very small circle; on the other hand, in 
these days of equality, especially in this country 
where caste has never existed, the social world 
seems to hold out alluring and tangible gifts to 
him who can enter its enchanted portals. Even 
politics, to judge by the acflions of some of our 
legislators, of late, would seem to be only a step- 
ping-stone to its door! 

"But my question," I hear my fair interloc- 
utor saying. "You are not answering it!" 

All in good time, my dear. I am just about 
to do so. Did you ever hear of Darwin and his 
theory of "selection?" It would be a slight to 
your intelligence not to take it for granted that 
you had. Well, my observations in the world 
lead me to believe that we follow there uncon- 
sciously, the same rules that guide the wild 
beasts in the forest. Certain individuals are en- 
dowed by nature with temperaments which make 
them take naturally to a social life and shine 
there. In it they find their natural element. 
They develop freely just where others shrivel 
up and disappear. There is continually going on 
unseen a "natural seledlion," the discarding of 
unfit material, the assimilation of new and con- 
genial elements from outside, with the logical 
result of a survival of the fittest. Aside from 

[ ^34 ] 



^ QUESTION ^ND ^N ANSWER 

this, you will find in "the world," as anywhere 
else, that the person who succeeds is generally 
he who has been willing to give the most of his 
strength and mind to that one objed, and has 
not allowed the flowers on the hillside to dis- 
tra6t him from his path, remembering also that 
genius is often but the "capacity for taking infin- 
ite pains." 

There are people so constituted that they 
cheerfully give the eiforts of a lifetime to the 
attainment of a brilliant social position. No fa- 
tigue is too great, and no snubs too bitter to be 
willingly undergone in pursuit of the cherished 
objed. You will never find such an individual, 
for instance, wandering in the flowery byways 
that lead to art or letters, for that would waste 
his time. If his family are too hard to raise, he 
will abandon the attempt and rise without them, 
for he cannot help himself. He is but an atom 
working as blindly upward as the plant that 
pushes its mysterious way towards the sun. 
Brains are not necessary. Good looks are but a 
trump the more in the "hand." Manners may 
help, but are not essential. The objed: can be 
and is attained daily without all three. Wealth is 
but the oil that makes the machinery run more 
smoothly. The all-important fadior is the desire 
to succeed, so strong that it makes any price 
seem cheap, and that can pay itself by a step 
gained, for mortification and weariness and heart- 
burnings. 

[ '^ZS ] 



IV0%^LT>LT W^rS & "BTPF^rS 

There, my dear, is the secret of success ! I stop 
because I feel myself becoming bitter, and that 
is a frame of mind to be carefully avoided, be- 
cause it interferes with the digestion and upsets 
one's gentle calm! I have tried to answer your 
question. The answer resolves itself into these 
two things; that it is necessary to be born with 
qualities which you may not possess, and calls for 
sacrifices you would doubtless be unwilling to 
make. It remains with you to decide if the little 
game is worth the candle. The delightful com- 
mon sense I feel quite sure you possess reas- 
sures me as to your answer. 

Take gayly such good things as may float 
your way, and profit by them while they last. 
Wander off into all the cross-roads that tempt 
you. Stop often to lend a helping hand to a less 
fortunate traveller. Rest in the heat of the day, 
as your spirit prompts you. Sit down before the 
sunset and revel in its beauty and you will find 
your voyage through life much more satisfadory 
to look back to and full of far sweeter memories 
than if by sacrificing any of these pleasures you 
had attained the greatest of "positions." 



[ 236 ] 



Living on Your Friends 

THACKERAY devoted a chapter in 
"Vanity Fair" to the problem "How 
to Live Well on Nothing a Year." It 
was neither a very new nor a very ingenious ex- 
pedient that "Becky" resorted to when she dis- 
counted her husband^s position and connection 
to fleece the tradespeople and cheat an old 
family servant out of a year's rent. The author 
might more justly have used his clever phrase 
in describing "Major Pendennis's" agreeable 
existence. We have made great progress in this, 
as in almost every other mode of living, in the 
latter half of the Vidorian era; intelligent indi- 
viduals of either sex, who know the ropes, can 
now as easily lead the existence of a multi-mil- 
lionaire (with as much satisfadion to themselves 
and their friends) as though the bank account, 
with all its attendant worries, stood in their own 
names. This subje6l is so vast, its ramifications 
so far-reaching and complicated, that one hesi- 
tates before launching into an analysis of it. It 
will be better simply to give a few interesting 
examples, and a general rule or two, for the en- 
lightenment and guidance of ingenious souls. 

Human nature changes little ; all that our ed- 
ucational and social training has accomplished 
is a smoothing of the surface. One of the most 

[ 237 ] 



striking proofs of this is, that here in our primi- 
tive country, as soon as accumulation of capital 
allowed certain families to live in great luxury, 
they returned to the ways of older aristocracies, 
and, with other wants, felt the necessity of a court 
about them, ladies and gentlemen in waiting, pages 
and jesters. Nature abhors a vacuum,so a class of 
people immediately felt an irresistible impulse to 
rush in and fill the void. Our aristocrats were not 
even obliged to send abroad to fill these vacan- 
cies, as they were for their footmen and butlers ; 
the native article was quite ready and willing and, 
considering the little practice it could have had, 
proved wonderfully adapted to the work. 

When the mania for building immense coun- 
try houses and yachts (the owning of opera 
boxes goes a little further back) first attacked 
this country, the builders imagined that, once 
completed, it would be the easiest, as well as the 
most delightful task to fill them with the pick 
of their friends, that they could get all the tal- 
ented and agreeable people they wanted by sim- 
ply making a sign. To their astonishment, they 
discovered that what appeared so simple was a 
difficult, as well as a thankless labor. I remember 
asking a lady who had owned a "proscenium" 
at the old Academy, why she had decided not 
to take a box in the (then) new opera-house. 

"Because, having passed thirty years of my 
life inviting people to sit in my box, I intend 
now to rest." It is very much the same thing 

[ 238 ] 



LIFINQ OV^ rOUl^ FRIENDS 

with yachts. A couple who had determined to 
go around the world, in their lately finished boat, 
were dumbfounded to find their invitations were 
not eagerly accepted. After exhausting the small 
list of people they really wanted, they began with 
others indifferent to them, and even then filled 
out their number with difficulty. A hostess who 
counts on a series of house parties through the 
autumn months, must begin early in the sum- 
mer if she is to have the guests she desires. 

It is just here that the "professional," if I 
may be allowed to use such an expression, comes 
to the front. He is always available. It is indif- 
ferent to him if he starts on a tour around the 
world or for a winter spree to Montreal. He is 
always amusing, good-humored, and can be 
counted on at the last moment to fill any vacant 
place, without being the least offended at the 
tardy invitation, for he belongs to the class who 
have discovered "how to live well on nothing 
a year.** Luxury is as the breath of his nostrils, 
but his means allow of little beyond necessities. 
The temptation must be great when everything 
that he appreciates most (and cannot afford) is 
urged upon him. We should not pose as too 
stern moralists, and throw stones at him; for 
there may enter more "best French plate" into 
the composition of our own houses than we im- 
agine. 

It is here our epoch shows its improvement 
over earlier and cruder days. At present no toad- 

[ 239 ] 



W01^LT>LY TVt/irS ^ "BYWAYS 

eating is conne6ted with the acceptance of hos- 
pitality, or, if occasionally a small "batrachian" 
is offered, it is so well disguised by an accom- 
plished chef^ and served on such exquisite old 
Dresden, that it slips down with very little ef- 
fort. Even this rarely occurs, unless the guest 
has allowed himself to become the inmate of a 
residence or yacht. Then he takes his chance 
with other members of the household, and if the 
host or hostess happens to have a bad temper as 
a set-off to their good table, it is apt to fare ill 
with our friend. 

So far, I have spoken of this class in the 
masculine, which is an error, as the art is suc- 
cessfully practised by the weaker sex, with this 
shade of difference. As an unmarried woman is 
in less general demand, she is apt to attach her- 
self to one dear friend, always sure to be a lady 
in possession of fine country and city houses 
and other appurtenances of wealth, often of in- 
ferior social standing; so that there is give and 
take, the guest rendering real service to an am- 
bitious hostess. The feminine aspirant need not 
be handsome. On the contrary, an agreeable 
plainness is much more acceptable, serving as 
a foil. But she must be excellent in all games, 
from golf to piquet, and willing to play as often 
and as long as required. She must also cheer- 
fully go in to dinner with the blue ribbon bore 
of the evening, only asked on account of his 
pretty wife (by the bye, why is it that Beauty 

[ 240 ] 



LIVINQ O^ rOVB^ FRIENDS 

is so often flanked by the Beast?), and sit be- 
tween him and the "second prize" bore. These 
two worthies would have been the portion of 
the hostess fifteen years ago; she would have 
considered it her duty to absorb them and pre- 
vent her other guests suffering. Alais nous avons 
change tout cela. The lady of the house now thinks 
first of amusing herself, and arranges to sit be- 
tween two favorites. 

Society has become much simpler, and espe- 
cially less expensive, for unmarried men than it 
used to be. Even if a hostess asks a favor in 
return for weeks of hospitality, the sacrifice she 
requires of a man is rarely greater than a cotil- 
lion with an unattractive debutante whom she is 
trying to launch; or the sitting through a partic- 
ularly dull opera in order to see her to the car- 
riage, her lord and master having slipped off early 
to his club and a quiet game of pool. Many 
people who read these lines are old enough to 
remember that prehistoric period when unmar- 
ried girls went to the theatre and parties, alone 
with the men they knew. This custom still pre- 
vails in our irrepressible West. It was an arrange- 
ment by which all the expenses fell on the man — 
theatre tickets, carriages if it rained, and often a 
bit of supper after. If a youth asked a girl to 
dance the cotillion, he was exped:ed to send a bou- 
quet, sure to cost between twenty and twenty-five 
dollars. What a blessed change for the impecuni- 
ous swell when all this went out of fashion ! New 

[ 241 ] 



York is his paradise now; in other parts of the 
world something is still expedled of him. In 
France it takes the form of a handsome bag of 
bon-bons on New Year's Day, if he has accepted 
hospitality during the past year. While here he 
need do absolutely nothing (unless he wishes to), 
the occasional leaving of a card having been sup- 
pressed of late by our jeunesse doree^ five minutes 
of their society in an opera box being estimated 
(by them) as ample return for a dinner or a week 
in a country house. 

The truth of it is, there are so few men who 
"go out" (it being practically impossible for any 
one working at a serious profession to sit up 
night after night, even if he desired), and at 
the same time so many women insist on enter- 
taining to amuse themselves or better their po- 
sition, that the men who go about get spoiled 
and almost come to consider the obligation con- 
ferred, when they dine out. There is no more 
amusing sight than poor paterfamilias sitting in 
the club between six and seven p. m. pretending 
to read the evening paper, but really with his eye 
on the door; he has been sent down by his wife 
to "get a man," as she is one short for her din- 
ner this evening. He must be one who will fit in 
well with the other guests; hence papa's anxious 
look, and the reason the editorial gets so little of 
his attention! Watch him as young "profes- 
sional " lounges in. There is just his man — if he 
only happens to be disengaged! You will see 

[ 242 ] 



LIVINQ OtH^ rOU^ FRIENDS 

"Pater" cross the room and shake hands, then, 
after a few minutes* whispered conversation, he 
will walk down to his coupe with such a relieved 
look on his face. Young "professional," who is 
in faultless evening dress, will ring for a cocktail, 
and take up the discarded evening paper to pass 
the time till eight twenty-five. 

Eight twenty-five, advisedly, for he will be 
the last to arrive, knowing, clever dog, how 
much eclat it gives one to have a room full of 
people asking each other, "Whom are we wait- 
ing for?" when the door opens, and he is an- 
nounced. He will stay a moment after the other 
guests have gone and receive the most cordial 
pressures of the hand from a grateful hostess (if 
not spoken words of thanks) in return for eating 
an exquisitely cooked dinner, seated between two 
agreeable women, drinking irreproachable wine, 
smoking a cigar, and washing the whole down 
with a glass of 1830 brandy, or some priceless 
historic madeira. 

There is probably a moral to be extracted 
from all this. But frankly my ethics are so mixed 
that I fail to see where the blame lies, and which 
is the less worthy individual, the ostentatious 
axe-grinding host or the interested guest. One 
thing, however, I see clearly, viz., that life is 
very agreeable to him who starts in with few 
prejudices, good manners, a large amount of 
well-concealed "cheek" and the happy faculty 
of taking things as they come. 

[ 243 ] 



N'' 36 

American Society in Italy 



THE phrase at the head of this chapter 
and other sentences, such as "Ameri- 
can Society in Paris/* or London, are 
constantly on the Hps of people who should 
know better. In reality these societies do not 
exist. Does my reader pause, wondering if he 
can believe his eyes? He has doubtless heard all 
his life of these delightful circles, and believes 
in them. He may even have dined, en passant, at 
the "palace" of some resident compatriot in 
Rome or Florence, under the impression that 
he was within its mystic limits. Illusion! An 
effed: of mirage, making that which appears 
quite tangible and solid when viewed from a dis- 
tance dissolve into thin air as one approaches; 
like the mirage, cheating the weary traveller with 
a vision of what he most longs for. 

Forty, even fifty years ago, there lived in 
Rome a group of very agreeable people; Story 
and the two Greenoughs and Crawford, the 
sculptor (father of the brilliant novelist of to- 
day) ; Charlotte Cushman (who divided her time 
between Rome and Newport), and her friend 
Miss Stebbins, the sculptress, to whose hands 
we owe the bronze fountain on the Mall in our 
Park; Rogers, then working at the bronze doors 
of our capitol, and many other cultivated and 

[ 244 ] 



^MERIC^N SOCIETT IN IT^LT 

agreeable people. Hawthorne passed a couple 
of winters among them, and the tone of that so- 
ciety is refledled in his " Marble Faun." He took 
Story as a model for his "Kenyon," and was 
the first to note the exotic grace of an American 
girl in that strange setting. They formed as 
transcendental and unworldly a group as ever 
gathered about a "tea" table. Great things were 
expected of them and their influence, but they 
disappointed the world, and, with the excep- 
tion of Hawthorne, are being fast forgotten. 

Nothing could be simpler than life in the 
papal capital in those pleasant days. Money was 
rare, but living was delightfully inexpensive. It 
was about that time, if I do not mistake, that a 
list was published in New York of the citizens 
worth one hundred thousand dollars; and it was 
not a long one! The Roman colony took "tea" 
informally with each other, and "received" on 
stated evenings in their studios (when mulled 
claret and cakes were the only refreshment of- 
fered; very bad they were, too), and migrated in 
the summer to the mountains near Rome or to 
Sorrento. In the winter months their circle was 
enlarged by a contingent from home. Among 
wealthy New Yorkers, it was the fashion in the 
early fifties to pass a winter in Rome, when, to- 
gether with his other dissipations, paterfamilias 
would sit to one of the American sculptors for 
his bust, which accounts for the horrors one now 
runs across in dark corners of country houses, — 

[ 245 ] 



WOI^LDLT W^YS ^ "BYWAYS 

ghostly heads in "chin whiskers" and Roman 
draperies. 

The son of one of these pioneers, more rich 
than cultivated, noticed the other day, while vis- 
iting a friend of mine, an exquisite eighteenth- 
century bust of Madame de Pompadour, the 
pride of his hostess's drawing-room. "Ah!" said 
Midas, "are busts the fashion again? I have one 
of my father, done in Rome in 1850. I will bring 
it down and put it in my parlor." 

The travellers consulted the residents in their 
purchases of copies of the old masters, for there 
were fashions in these luxuries as in everything 
else. There was a run at that time on the "Ma- 
donna in the Chair;" and "Beatrice Cenci" was 
long prime favorite. Thousands of the latter leer- 
ing and winking over her everlasting shoulder, 
were solemnly sent home each year. No one 
ever dreamed of buying an original painting! 
The tourists also developed a taste for large 
marble statues, "Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pom- 
peii" (people read Bulwer, Byron and the Bible 
then) being in such demand that I knew one 
block in lower Fifth Avenue that possessed 
seven blind Nydias, all life-size, in white mar- 
ble, — a form of decoration about as well adapted 
to those scanty front parlors as a steam engine 
or a carriage and pair would have been. I fear 
Bulwer's heroine is at a discount now, and often 
wonder as I see those old residences turning into 
shops, what has become of the seven white ele- 

[ 246 ] 



^MERIC^N SOCIETT IN IT^LY 

phants and all their brothers and sisters that our 
innocent parents brought so proudly back from 
Italy! I have succeeded in locating two statues 
evidently imported at that time. They grace the 
back steps of a rather shabby villa in the country, 
— Demosthenes and Cicero, larger than life, 
dreary, funereal memorials of the follies of our 
fathers. 

The simple days we have been speaking of 
did not, however, outlast the circle that inau- 
gurated them. About 1867 a few rich New 
Yorkers began "trying to know the Italians "and 
go about with them. One family, "up to snufF" 
in more senses than one, married their daugh- 
ter to the scion of a princely house, and imme- 
diately a large number of her compatriots were 
bitten with the madness of going into Italian 
society. 

In 1870, Rome became the capital of united 
Italy. The court removed there. The "improve- 
ments" began. Whole quarters were remodelled, 
and the dear old Rome of other days, the Rome 
of Hawthorne and Madame de Stael, was swept 
away. With this new state of things came a num- 
ber of Americo-Italian marriages, more or less 
successful ; and any thinglike an American society, 
properly so-called, disappeared. To-day families 
of our compatriots passing the winter months in 
Rome are either tourists who live in hotels, and 
see sights, or go (as far as they can) into Italian 
society. 

[ 247 ] 



ivo'B^LT>Lr w^rs ^ "BTW^rS 

The Queen of Italy, who speaks excellent 
English, developed a penchant for Americans, and 
has attached several who married Italians to her 
person in different court capacities; indeed, the 
old "Black" society, who have remained true 
to the Pope, when they wish to ridicule the new 
"White" or royal circle, call it the "American 
court!" The feeling is bitter still between the 
" Blacks" and "Whites," and an American girl 
who marries into one of these circles must make 
up her mind to see nothing of friends or relatives 
in the opposition ranks. It is said that an amal- 
gamation is being brought about, but it is slow 
work; a generation will have to die out before 
much real mingling of the two courts will take 
place. As both these circles are poor, very little 
entertainment goes on. One sees a little life in 
the diplomatic world, and the King and Queen 
give a ball or two during the winter, but since 
the repeated defeats of the Italian arms in Africa, 
and the heavy financial difficulties (things these 
sovereigns take very seriously to heart), there 
has not been much "go" in the court entertain- 
ments. 

The young set hope great things of the new 
Princess of Naples, the bride of the heir-appar- 
ent, a lady who is credited with being full of fun 
and life; it is fondly imagined that she will set the 
ball rolling again. By the bye, her first lady-in- 
waiting, the young Duchess del Monte of Na- 
ples, was an American girl, and a very pretty 

[ 248 ] 



^MERIC^N SOCIETT IN IT^LT 

one, too. She enjoyed for some time the enviable 
distinction of being the youngest and handsomest 
duchess in Europe, until Miss Vanderbilt married 
Marlborough and took the record from her. The 
Prince and Princess of Naples live at their Nea- 
politan capital, and will not do much to help 
things in Rome. Besides which he is very deli- 
cate and passes for not being any too fond of the 
world. 

What makes things worse is that the great no- 
bles are mostly "land poor," and even the richer 
ones burned their fingers in the craze for specu- 
lation that turned all Rome upside down in the 
years following 1870 and Italian unity, when 
they naively imagined their new capital was to 
become again after seventeen centuries the me- 
tropolis of the world. Whole quarters of new 
houses were run up for a population that failed 
to appear; these houses now stand empty and 
are fast going to ruin. So that little in the way 
of entertaining is to be expedled from the bank- 
rupts. They are a genial race, these Italian 
nobles, and welcome rich strangers and marry 
them with much enthusiasm — ^just a shade too 
much, perhaps — the girl counting for so little 
and her dot for so much in the matrimonial scale. 
It is only necessary to keep open house to have 
the pick of the younger ones as your guests. 
They will come to entertainments at American 
houses and bring all their relations, and dance, 
and dine, and flirt with great good humor and 

[ 249 ] 



persistency; but if there is not a good solid for- 
tune in the background, in the best of securities, 
the prettiest American smiles never tempt them 
beyond flirtation; the season over, they disappear 
up into their mountain villas to wait for a new im- 
portation from the States. 

In Rome, as well as in the other Italian cities, 
there are, of course, still to be found Americans 
in some numbers (where on the Continent will 
you not find them?), living quietly for study or 
economy. But they are not numerous or united 
enough to form a society; and are apt to be in- 
volved in bitter strife am.ong themselves. 

Why, you ask, should Americans quarrel 
among themselves? 

Some years ago I was passing the summer 
months on the Rhine at a tiny German watering- 
place, principally frequented by English, who 
were all living together in great peace and har- 
mony, until one fatal day, when an Earl appeared. 
He was a poor Irish Earl, very simple and un- 
offending, but he brought war into that town, 
heart-burnings, envy, and backbiting. The Eng- 
lish colony at once divided itself into two camps, 
those who knew the Earl and those who did not. 
And peace fled from our little society. You will 
find in every foreign capital among the resident 
Americans, just such a state of affairs as con- 
vulsed that German spa. The native "swells" 
have come to be the apple of discord that divides 
our good people among themselves. Those who 

[ 250 ] 



^MERIC^^N SOCIETY IN IT^LT 

have been successful in knowing the foreigners 
avoid their compatriots and live with their new 
friends, while the other group who, from lazi- 
ness, disinclination, or principle (?) have re- 
mained true to their American circle, cannot 
resist calling the others snobs, and laughing (a 
bit enviously, perhaps) at their upward struggles. 
It is the same in Florence. The little there 
was left of an American society went to pieces 
on that rock. Our parents forty years ago seem 
to me to have been much more self-respec5ting 
and sensible. They knew perfectly well that 
there was nothing in common between them- 
selves and the Italian nobility, and that those 
good people were not going to put themselves 
out to make the acquaintance of alot of strangers, 
mostly of another religion, unless it was to be 
materially to their advantage. So they left them 
quietly alone. I do not pretend to judge any 
one's motives, but confess I cannot help regard- 
ing with suspicion a foreigner who leaves his own 
circle to mingle with strangers. It resembles too 
closely the amiabilities of the wolf for the lamb, 
or the sudden politeness of a school-boy to a 
little girl who has received a box of candies. 



[251 ] 



The Newport of the Past 



FEW of the "carnage ladies and gentle- 
men "who disport themselves in Newport 
during the summer months, yachting and 
dancing through the short season, then flitting 
away to fresh fields and pastures new, realize 
that their daintily shod feet have been treading 
historic ground, or care to cast a thought back 
to the past. Oddly enough, to the majority of 
people the past is a volume rarely opened. Not 
that it bores them to read it, but because they, 
like children, want some one to turn over its 
yellow leaves and point out the pidlures to them. 
Few of the human motes that dance in the rays 
of the afternoon sun as they slant across the little 
Park, think of the fable which asserts that a 
sea-worn band of adventurous men, centuries 
before the Cabots or the Genoese discoverer 
thought of crossing the Atlantic, had pushed 
bravely out over untried seas and landed on this 
rocky coast. Yet one apparent evidence of their 
stay tempts our thoughts back to the times when 
it is said to have been built as a bower for a king's 
daughter. Longfellow, in the swinging verse of 
his "Skeleton in Armor," breathing of the sea 
and the Norseman's fatal love, has thrown such 
a glamour of poetry around the tower, that one 
would fain believe all he relates. The hardy 

[ ^5^ ] 



THE NEWPORT OF THE P^ST 

Norsemen, if they ever came here, succumbed 
in their struggle with the native tribes, or, dis- 
couraged by death and hardships, sailed away, 
leaving the clouds of oblivion to close again 
darkly around this continent, and the fog of dis- 
cussion to circle around the "Old Mill." 

The little settlement of another race, speak- 
ing another tongue, that centuries later sprang 
up in the shadow of the tower, quickly grew into 
abusyand prosperous city, which, like New York, 
its rival, was captured and held by the English. 
To walk now through some of its quaint, narrow 
streets is to step back into Revolutionary days. 
Hardly a house has changed since the time when 
the red coats of the British officers brightened 
the prim perspedives, and turned loyal young 
heads as they passed. 

At the corner of Spring and Pelham Streets, 
still stands the residence of General Prescott,who 
was carried away prisoner by his opponents, they 
having rowed down in whale-boats from Provi- 
dence for the attack. Rochambeau, our French 
ally, lodged lower down in Mary Street. In the 
tower of Trinity, one can read the epitaph of the 
unfortunate Chevalier de Ternay, commander of 
the sea forces, whose body lies near by. Many 
years later his relative, the Due de Noailles,when 
Minister to this country, had this simple tablet 
repaired and made a visit to the spot. 

A long period of prosperity followed the Rev- 
olution, during which Newport grew and flour- 

[ '^SZ ] 



ished. Our pious and God-fearing "forbears," 
having secured personal and religious liberty, 
proceeded to inaugurate a most successful and 
remunerative trade in rum and slaves. It was a 
triangular transadtion and yielded a three-fold 
profit. The simple population of that day, num- 
bering less than ten thousand souls, possessed 
twenty distilleries; finding it a physical impos- 
sibility to drink all the rum, they conceived the 
happy thought of sending the surplus across to 
the coast of Africa, where it appears to have been 
much appreciated by the native chiefs, who eagerly 
exchanged the pick of their loyal subjedls for that 
liquid. These poor brutes were taken to the West 
Indies and exchanged for sugar, laden with which, 
the vessels returned to Newport. 

Having introduced the dusky chieftains to 
the charms of delirium tremens and their subjects 
to life-long slavery, one can almost see these pious 
deacons proceeding to church to offer up thanks 
for the return of their successful vessels. Alas ! 
even "the best laid schemes of mice and men" 
come to an end. The War of 1 8 12, the opening 
of the Erie Canal and sundry railways struck a 
blow at Newport commerce, from which it never 
recovered. The city sank into oblivion, and for 
over thirty years not a house was built there. 

It was not until near 1840 that the Middle- 
tons and Izzards and other wealthy and aristo- 
cratic Southern families were tempted to Newport 
by the climate and the facilities it offered for bath- 

[ 254 ] 



THE NEWPORT OF THE P^ST 

ingj shooting and boating. A boarding-house or 
two sufficed for the modest wants of the new- 
comers, first among which stood the Aquidneck, 
presided over by kind Mrs. Murray. It was not 
until some years later, when New York and 
Boston families began to appreciate the place, 
that the first hotels were built, — the Atlantic on 
the square facing the old mill, the Bellevue and 
Fillmore on Catherine Street, and finally the 
original Ocean House, destroyed by fire in 1845 
and rebuilt as we see it to-day. The croakers of 
the epoch considered it much too far out of town 
to be successful, for at its door the open fields 
began, a gate there separating the town from the 
country across which a straggling, half-made road, 
closed by innumerable gates, led along the cliffs 
and out across what is now the Ocean Drive. 
The principal roads at that time led inland; any 
one wishing to drive seaward had to descend 
every two or three minutes to open a gate. The 
youth of the day discovered a source of income 
in opening and closing these for pennies. 

Fashion had decreed that the corred hour for 
dancing was 1 1 a. m., and matinees dansantes were 
regularly given at the hotels, our grandmothers 
appearing in decollete muslin frocks adorned with 
broad sashes, and disporting themselves gayly 
until the dinner hour. Low-neck dresses were 
the rule, not only for these informal entertain- 
ments, but as every-day wear for young girls, — 
an old lady only the other day telling me she 

[255] 



lF01{^LT>Lr JV^rS iff "BYWAYS 

had never worn a "high-body" until after her 
marriage. Two o'clock found all the beauties and 
beaux dining. How incredulously they would 
have laughed if any one had prophesied that 
their grandchildren would prefer eight forty-five 
as a dinner hour! 

The opening of Bellevue Avenue marked an- 
other epoch in the history of Newport. About 
that time Governor Lawrence bought the whole 
of Ochre Point farm for fourteen thousand dol- 
lars, and Mr.de Rham built on the newly opened 
road the first "cottage," which stands to-day 
modestly back from the avenue opposite Perry 
Street. If houses have souls, as Hawthorne 
averred, and can remember and compare, what 
curious thoughts must pass through the oaken 
brain of this simple construction as it sees its mar- 
ble neighbors rearing their vast facades among 
trees. The trees, too, are an innovation, for when 
the de Rham cottage was built and Mrs. Cleve- 
land opened her new house at the extreme end of 
Rough Point (the second summer residence in 
the place) it is doubtful if a single tree broke the 
rocky monotony of the landscape from the Ocean 
House to Bateman's Point. 

Governor Lawrence, having sold one acre of 
his Ochre Point farm to Mr. Pendleton for the 
price he himself had paid for the whole, pro- 
ceeded to build a stone wall between the two 
properties down to the water's edge. The pop- 
ulation of Newport had been accustomed to 

[256] 



THE NEWPORT OF THE P^ST 

take their Sunday airings and moonlight rambles 
along "the cliffs/' and viewed this obstruction 
of their favorite walk with dismay. So strong was 
their feeling that when the wall was completed 
the young men of the town repaired there in the 
night and tore it down. It was rebuilt, the mor- 
tar being mixed with broken glass. This infuri- 
ated the people to such an extent that the whole 
populace, in broad daylight, accompanied by the 
summer visitors, destroyed the wall and threw 
the materials into the sea. Lawrence, bent on 
maintaining what he considered his rights, called 
the law to his aid. It was then discovered that 
an immemorial riverain right gave the fishermen 
and the public generally, access to the shore for 
fishing, and also to colled: seaweed, — a right of 
way that no one could obstru6t. 

This was the beginning of the long struggle 
between the cliff-dwellers and the townspeople; 
each new property-owner, disgusted at the idea 
that all the world can stroll at will across his 
well-kept lawns, has in turn tried his hand at 
suppressing the now famous "walk." Not only 
do the public claim the liberty to walk there, 
but also the right to cross any property to get 
to the shore. At this moment the city fathers 
and the committee of the new buildings at Bai- 
ley's Beach are wrangling as gayly as in Gover- 
nor Lawrence's day over a bit of wall lately 
constructed across the end of Bellevue Avenue. 
A new expedient has been hit upon by some of 

[ 257 ] 



the would-be exclusive owners of the cliffs; they 
have lowered the "walk" out of sight, thus in- 
suring their own privacy and in no way interfer- 
ing with the rights of the public. 

Among the gentlemen who settled in New- 
port about Governor Lawrence's time was Lord 
Baltimore (Mr. Calvert, he preferred to call him- 
self), who remained there until his death. He 
was shy of referring to his English peerage, but 
would willingly talk of his descent through his 
mother from Peter Paul Rubens, from whom 
had come down to him a chateau in Holland 
and several splendid paintings. The latter hung 
in the parlor of the modest little dwelling, where 
I was taken to see them and their owner many 
years ago. My introducer on this occasion was 
herself a lady of no ordinary birth, being the 
daughter of Stuart, our greatest portrait painter. 
I have passed many quiet hours in the quaint 
studio (the same her father had used), hearing 
her prattle — as she loved to do if she found 
a sympathetic listener — of her father, of Wash- 
ington and his pompous ways, and the many 
celebrities who had in turn posed before Stuart's 
easel. She had been her father's companion 
and aid, present at the sittings, preparing his 
brushes and colors, and painting in back- 
grounds and accessories; and would willingly 
show his palette and explain his methods and 
theories of color, his predilection for scrumbling 
shadows thinly in black and then painting boldly 

[ 258 ] 



THE NEWPORT OF THE P^ST 

in with body color. Her lessons had not prof- 
ited much to the gentle, kindly old lady, for the 
productions of her own brush were far from re- 
sembling her great parentis work. She, however, 
painted cheerfully on to life's close, surrounded 
by her many friends, foremost among whom was 
Charlotte Cushman, who also passed the last 
years of her life in Newport. Miss Stuart was 
over eighty when I last saw her, still full of 
spirit and vigor, beginning the portrait of a fa- 
mous beauty of that day, since the wife and 
mother of dukes. 

Miss Stuart's death seems to close one of the 
chapters in the history of this city, and to break 
the last conneding link with its past. The world 
moves so quickly that the simple days and mod- 
est amusements of our fathers and grandfathers 
have already receded into misty remoteness. We 
look at their portraits and wonder vaguely at their 
graceless costumes. We know they trod these same 
streets, and laughed and flirted and married as we 
are doing to-day, but they seem to us strangely 
far away, like inhabitants of another sphere. 

It is humiliating to think how soon we, too, 
shall have become the ancestors of a new and 
careless generation; fresh faces will replace our 
faded ones, young voices will laugh as they look 
at our portraits hanging in dark corners, won- 
dering who we were, and (criticising the apparel 
we think so artistic and appropriate) how we could 
ever have made such guys of ourselves. 

[ 259 ] 



N'' 38 

A Conquest of Europe 



THE most important event in modern 
history is the discovery of Europe by 
the Americans. Before it, the peoples 
of the Old World lived happy and contented in 
their own countries, pra6lising the patriarchal 
virtues handed down to them from generations 
of forebears, ignoring alike the vices and bene- 
fits of modern civilization, as understood on this 
side of the Atlantic. The simple-minded Euro- 
peans remained at home, satisfied with the rank 
in life where they had been born, and innocent 
of the ways of the new world. 

These peoples were, on the whole, not so much 
to be pitied, for they had many pleasing crafts 
and arts unknown to the invaders, which had 
enabled them to decorate their capitals with taste 
in a rude way; nothing really great like the lofty 
buildings and elevated railway strudlures, exe- 
cuted in American cities, but interesting as show- 
ing what an ingenious race, deprived of the 
secrets of modern science, could accomplish. 

The more aesthetic of the newcomers even 
affeded to admire the antiquated places of wor- 
ship and residences they visited abroad, point- 
ing out to their compatriots that in many cases 
marble, bronze and other old-fashioned materi- 
als had been so cleverly treated as to look al- 

[ 260 ] 



^ CONQUEST OF EUROPE 

most like the superior cast-iron employed at 
home, and that some of the old paintings, pre- 
served with veneration in the museums, had 
nearly the brilliancy of modern chromos. As 
their authors had, however, negleded to use a 
process lending itself to rapid reprodu6tion, they 
were of no pradlical value. In other ways, the 
continental races, when discovered, were sadly 
behind the times. In business, they ignored the 
use of "corners," that backbone of American 
trade, and their ideas of advertising were but 
little in advance of those known among the 
ancient Greeks. 

The discovery of Europe by the Americans 
was made about 1850, at which date the first 
bands of adventurers crossed the seas in search of 
amusement. The reports these pioneers brought 
back of the naivete^ politeness, and gullibility of 
the natives, and the cheapness of existence in 
their cities, caused a general exodus from the 
western to the eastern hemisphere. Most of the 
Americans who had used up their credit at home 
and those whose incomes were insufficient for 
their wants, immediately migrated to these happy 
hunting grounds, where life was inexpensive and 
credit unlimited. 

The first arrivals enjoyed for some twenty 
years unique opportunities. They were able to 
live in splendor for a pittance that would barely 
have kept them in necessaries on their own side 
of the Atlantic, and to pick up valuable speci- 

[ 261 ] 



mens of native handiwork for nominal sums. In 
those happy days, to belong to the invading race 
was a sufficient passport to the good graces of 
the Europeans, who asked no other guarantees 
before trading with the new-comers, but flocked 
around them, offering their services and their 
primitive manufactures, convinced that Ameri- 
cans were all wealthy. 

Alas! History ever repeats itself. As Mexicans 
and Peruvians, after receiving their conquerors 
with confidence and enthusiasm, came to rue the 
day they had opened their arms to strangers, so 
the European peoples, before a quarter of a cen- 
tury was over, realized that the hordes from 
across the sea who were over-running their lands, 
raising prices, crowding the native students out 
of the schools, and finally attempting to force 
an entrance into society, had little to recommend 
them or justify their presence except money. 
Even in this some of the intruders were unsat- 
isfactory. Those who had been received into the 
"bosom'* of hotels often forgot to settle before 
departing. The continental women who had pro- 
vided the wives of discoverers with the raiment 
of the country (a luxury greatly aff'edted by those 
ladies) found, to their disgust, that their new 
customers were often unable or unwilling to ofl^er 
any remuneration. 

In consequence of these and many other dis- 
illusions, Americans began to be called the "De- 
stroyers," especially when it became known that 

[ 262 ] 



^ CONQUEST OF EUROPE 

nothing was too heavy or too bulky to be car- 
ried away by the invaders, who tore the insides 
from the native houses, the paintings from the 
walls, the statues from the temples, and trans- 
ported this booty across the seas, much in the 
same way as the Romans had plundered Greece. 
Elaborate furniture seemed especially to attrad: 
the new arrivals, who acquired vast quantities of it. 

Here, however, the wily natives (who were 
beginning to appreciate their own belongings) 
had revenge. Immense quantities of worthless 
imitations were secretly manufactured and sold 
to the travellers at fabulous prices. The same 
artifice was used with paintings, said to be by 
great masters, and with imitations of old stuffs 
and bric-a-brac, which the ignorant and arrogant 
invaders pretended to appreciate and colled:. 

Previous to our arrival there had been an in- 
vasion of the Continent by the English about 
the year 1812. One of their historians, called 
Thackeray, gives an amusing account of this in 
the opening chapters of his "Shabby Genteel 
Story." That event, however, was unimportant 
in comparison with the great American move- 
ment, although both were charaderized by the 
same total disregard of the feelings and preju- 
dices of indigenous populations. The English 
then walked about the continental churches dur- 
ing divine service, gazing at the pidures and 
consulting their guide-books as unconcernedly 
as our compatriots do to-day. They also crowded 

[ 263 ] 



into theatres and concert halls, and afterwards 
wrote to the newspapers complaining of the bad 
atmosphere of those primitive establishments 
and of the long entraites. 

As long as the invaders confined themselves 
to such trifles, the patient foreigners submitted 
to their overbearing and uncouth ways because 
of the supposed benefit to trade. The natives 
even went so far as to build hotels for the ac- 
commodation and delight of the invaders, aban- 
doning whole quarters to their guests. 

There was, however, a point at which com- 
placency stopped. The older civilizations had 
formed among themselves restric5ted and exclu- 
sive societies, to which access was almost impos- 
sible to strangers. These sanduaries tempted the 
immigrants, who offered their fairest virgins and 
much treasure for the privilege of admission. 
The indigenous aristocrats, who were mostly 
poor, yielded to these offers and a few Americans 
succeeded in forcing an entrance. But the old no- 
bility soon became frightened at the number and 
vulgarity of the invaders, and withdrew severely 
into their shells, refusing to accept any further 
bribes either in the form of females or finance. 

From this moment dates the humiliation of 
the discoverers. All their booty and plunder 
seemed worthless in comparison with the Elysian 
delights they imagined were concealed behind the 
closed doors of those holy places, visions of which 
tortured the women from thewestern hemisphere 

[ 264 ] 



^ CONQUEST OF EUROPE 

and prevented their taking any pleasure in other 
vidories. To be received into those inner circles 
became their chief ambition. With this end in view 
they dressed themselves in expensive costumes, 
took the trouble to learn the "lingo" spoken in 
the country, went to the extremity of copying 
the ways of the native women by painting their 
faces, and in one or two cases imitated the laxity 
of their morals. 

In spite of these concessions, our women were 
not received with enthusiasm. On the contrary, 
the very name of an American became a byword 
and an abomination in every continental city. 
This prejudice against us abroad is hardly to be 
wondered at on reflecting what we have done to 
acquire it. The agents chosen by our govern- 
ment to treat diplomatically with the conquered 
nations, owe their selection to political motives 
rather than to their ta6t or fitness. In the large ma- 
jority of cases men are sent over who know little 
either of the habits or languages prevailing in 
Europe. 

The worst elements always follow in the wake 
of discovery. Our settlements abroad gradually 
became the abode of the compromised, the di- 
vorced, the socially and financially bankrupt. 

Within the last decade we have found a way 
to revenge the slights put upon us, especially 
those offered to Americans in the capital of Gaul. 
Having for the moment no playwrights of our 
own, the men who concod: dramas, comedies, 

[265] 



WOI^LDLT WJtYS & "BTW^TS 

and burlesques for our stage find, instead of 
wearying themselves in trying to produce original 
matter, that it is much simpler to adapt from 
French writers. This has been carried to such a 
length that entire French plays are now produced 
in New York signed by American names. 

The great French playwrights can protect 
themselves by taking out American copyright, 
but if one of them omits this formality, the 
"conquerors" immediately seize upon his work 
and translate it, omitting intentionally all men- 
tion of the real author on their programmes. This 
season a play was produced of which the first adl 
was taken from Guy de Maupassant, the second 
and third "adapted" from Sardou, with episodes 
introduced from other authors to brighten the 
mixture. The piece thus patched together is 
signed by a well-known Anglo-Saxon name, and 
accepted by our moral public, although the orig- 
inal of the first ad: was stopped by the Parisian 
police as too immoral for that gay capital. 

Of what use would it be to "discover" a new 
continent unless the explorers were to reap some 
s jch benefits? Let us take every advantage that 
our proud position gives us, plundering the for- 
eign authors, making penal settlements of their 
capitals, and ignoring their foolish customs and 
prejudices when we travel among them! In this 
way shall we effectually impress on the inferior 
races across the Atlantic the greatness of the 
American nation. 

[ 266 ] 



A Race of Slaves 



IT is all very well for us to have invaded 
Europe, and awakened that somnolent con- 
tinent to the lights and delights of Ameri- 
can ways ; to have beautified the cities of the old 
world with graceful trolleys and illuminated the 
catacombs at Rome with eled:ricity. Every true 
American must thrill with satisfadlion at these 
achievements, and the knowledge that he be- 
longs to a dominating race, before which the 
waning civilization of Europe must fade away 
and disappear. 

To have discovered Europe and to rule as 
conquerors abroad is well, but it is not enough, 
if we are led in chains at home. It is recorded 
of a certain ambitious captain whose " Commen- 
taries" made our school-days a burden, that "he 
preferred to be the first in a village rather than 
second at Rome." Oddly enough, we are con- 
tented to be slaves in our villages while we are 
conquerors in Rome. Can it be that the struggles 
of our ancestors for freedom were fought in vain? 
Did they throw off the yoke of kings, cross the 
Atlantic, found a new form of government on a 
new continent, break with traditions, and sign a 
declaration of independence, only that we should 
succumb, a century later, yielding the fruits of 
their hard-fought battles with craven supineness 

[ 267 ] 



into the hands of corporations and municipalities; 
humbly bowing necks that refuse to bend before 
anointed sovereigns, to the will of steamboat sub- 
ordinates, the insolence of be-diamonded hotel- 
clerks, and the captious conductor ? 

Last week my train from Washington arrived 
in Jersey City on time. We scurried (like good 
Americans) to the ferry-boat, hot and tired and 
anxious to get to our destination; a hope de- 
ferred, however, for our boat was kept waiting 
forty long minutes, because, forsooth, another 
train from somewhere in the South was behind 
time. Expostulations were in vain. Being only 
the paying public, we had no rights that those 
autocrats, the officials, were bound to resped:. 
The argument that if they knew the southern 
train to be so much behind, the ferry-boat would 
have plenty of time to take us across and return, 
was of no avail, so, like a cargo of "moo-cows'* 
(as the children say), we submitted meekly. In 
order to make the time pass more pleasantly for 
the two hundred people gathered on the boat, a 
dusky potentate judged the moment appropriate 
to scrub the cabin floors. So, aided by a couple of 
subordinates, he proceeded to deluge the entire 
place in floods of water, obliging us to sit with 
our feet tucked up under us, splashing the ladies' 
skirts and our wraps and belongings. 

Such treatment of the public would have 
raised a riot anvwhere but in this land of free- 
dom. Do you suppose any one murmured? Not 

[ 268 ] 



e/f R^CE OF SLAVES 

at all. The well-trained public had the air of being 
in church. My neighbors appeared astonished 
at my impatience, and informed me that they 
were often detained in that way, as the company 
was short of boats, but they hoped to have a 
new one in a year or two. This detail did not 
prevent that corporation advertising our train to 
arrive in New York at three-thirteen, instead of 
which we landed at four o'clock. If a similar 
breach of contrad: had happened in England, 
a dozen letters would have appeared in the 
"Times," and the grievance been well aired. 

Another infliction to which all who travel in 
America are subje6ted is the brushing atrocity. 
Twenty minutes before a train arrives at its 
destination, the despot who has taken no notice 
of any one up to this moment, except to snub 
them, becomes suspiciously attentive and insists 
on brushing everybody. The dirt one traveller 
has been accumulating is sent in clouds into the 
faces of his neighbors. When he is polished off 
and has paid his "quarter" of tribute, the next 
man gets up, and the dirt is then brushed back 
on to number one, with number two's colledlion 
added. 

Labiche begins one of his plays with two ser- 
vants at work in a salon. "Dusting," says one 
of them, "is the art of sending the dirt from the 
chair on the right over to the sofa on the left." 
I always think of that remark when I see the 
process performed in a parlor car, for when it 

[ 269] 



is over we are all exa6lly where we began. If a 
man should shampoo his hair, or have his boots 
cleaned in a salon, he would be ejedled as a 
boor; yet the idea apparently never enters the 
heads of those who soil and choke their fellow- 
passengers that the brushing might be done in 
the vestibule. 

On the subject of fresh air and heat we are 
also in the hands of officials, dozens of passen- 
gers being made to suffer for the caprices of one 
of their number, or the taste of some captious 
invalid. In other lands the rights of minorities 
are often ignored. With us it is the contrary. 
One sniffling school-girl who prefers a temper- 
ature of 80 degrees can force a car full of people 
to swelter in an atmosphere that is death to 
them, because she refuses either to put on her 
wraps or to have a window opened. 

Street railways are torture-chambers where we 
slaves are made to suffer in another way. You 
must begin to reel and plunge towards the door 
at least two blocks before your destination, so 
as to leap to the ground when the car slows up; 
otherwise the conductor will be offended with 
you, and carry you several squares too far, or 
with a jocose "Step lively," will grasp your 
elbow and shoot you out. Any one who should 
sit quietly in his place until the vehicle had 
come to a full stop, would be regarded by the 
slave-driver and his cargo as a poseur who was 
assuming airs. 

[ 270 ] 



c^ R^CE OF SL^FES 

The idea that cars and boats exist for the con- 
venience of the public was exploded long ago. 
We are made, dozens of times a day, to feel that 
this is no longer the case. It is, on the contrary, 
brought vividly home to us that such convey- 
ances are money-making machines in the pos- 
session of powerful corporations (to whom we, 
in our debasement, have handed over the free- 
dom of our streets and rivers), and are run in 
the interest and at the discretion of their owners. 

It is not only before the great and the pow- 
erful that we bow in submission. The shop-girl 
is another tyrant who has planted her foot firmly 
on the neck of the nation. She respe6i:s neither 
sex nor age. Ensconced behind the bulwark of 
her counter, she scorns to notice humble aspir- 
ants until they have performed a preliminary 
penance; a time she fills up in cheerful conver- 
sation addressed to other young tyrants, only 
deciding to notice customers when she sees their 
last grain of patience is exhausted. She is often of 
a merry mood, and if anything about your ap- 
pearance or manner strikes her critical sense as 
amusing, will laugh gayly with her companions 
at your expense. 

A French gentleman who speaks our language 
corredtly but with some accent, told me that he 
found it impossible to get served in our stores, 
the shop-girls bursting with laughter before he 
could make his wants known. 

Not long ago I was at the Compagnie Lyon- 

[ 271 ] 



naise in Paris with a stout American lady, who 
insisted on tipping her chair forward on its front 
legs as she seled:ed some laces. Suddenly the 
chair flew from under her, and she sat violently 
on the polished floor in an attitude so supremely 
comic that the rest of her party were inwardly 
convulsed. Not a muscle moved in the faces of 
the well-trained clerks. The proprietor assisted 
her to rise as gravely as if he were bowing us to 
our carriage. 

In restaurants American citizens are treated 
even worse than in the shops. You will see cowed 
customers who are anxious to get away to their 
business or pleasure sitting mutely patient, until 
a waiter happens to remember their orders. I do 
not know a single establishment in this city where 
the waiters take any notice of their customers' 
arrival, or where the proprietor comes, toward 
the end of the meal, to inquire if the dishes have 
been cooked to their taste. The interest so gen- 
eral on the Continent or in England is replaced 
here by the same air of being disturbed from 
more important occupations, that characterizes 
the shop-girl and elevator boy. 

Numbers of our people live apparently in 
awe of their servants and the opinion of the 
tradespeople. One middle-aged lady whom I oc- 
casionally take to the theatre, insists when we 
arrive at her door on my accompanying her to 
the elevator, in order that the youth who presides 
therein may see that she has an escort, the opinion 

[ 272 ] 



e/f R^CE OF SLAVES 

of this subordinate apparently being of supreme 
importance to her. One of our "gilded youths" 
recently told me of a thrilling adventure in which 
he had figured. At the moment he was passing 
under an awning on his way to a reception, a 
gust of wind sent his hat gambolling down the 
block. "Think what a situation," he exclaimed. 
"There stood a group of my friends* footmen 
watching me. But I was equal to the situation, 
and entered the house as if nothing had hap- 
pened ! " Sir Walter Raleigh sacrificed a cloak to 
please a queen. This youth abandoned a new hat, 
fearing the laughter of a half-dozen servants. 

One of the reasons why we have become so 
weak in the presence of our paid masters is that 
nowhere is the individual allowed to protest. The 
other night a friend who was with me at a theatre 
considered the acting inferior, and expressed his 
opinion by hissing. He was promptly eje6led by 
a policeman. The man next me was, on the con- 
trary, so pleased with the piece that he encored 
every song. I had paid to see the piece once, and 
rebelled at being obliged to see it twice to suit 
my neighbor. On referring the matter to the box- 
office, the caliph in charge informed me that the 
slaves he allowed to enter his establishment (like 
those who in other days formed the court of 
Louis XIV.) were permitted to praise, but were 
suppressed if they murmured dissent. In his Me- 
moireSy Dumas, ^^r^, tells of a "first night" when 
three thousand people applauded a play of his 

[ 273 ] 



WO'E^LT>Lr W^TS ^ "BYWAYS 

and one sped;ator hissed. "He was the only one 
I respected," said Dumas," for the piece was bad, 
and that criticism spurred me on to improve it." 
How can we hope for any improvement in the 
standard of our entertainments, the manners of 
our servants or the ways of corporations when no 
one complains? We are too much in a hurry to 
follow up a grievance and have it righted. "It 
doesn't pay," "I haven't got the time," are 
phrases with which all such subjedsare dismissed. 
We will sit in over-heated cars, eat vilely cooked 
food, put up with insolence from subordinates, 
because it is too much trouble to assert our rights. 
Is the spirit that prompted the first shots on 
Lexington Common becoming extind:? Have the 
floods of emigration so diluted our Anglo-Saxon 
blood that we no longer care to fight for liberty ? 
Will no patriot arise and lead a revolt against 
our tyrants? 

I am prepared to follow such a leader, and 
have already marked my prey. First, I will slay 
a certain miscreant who sits at the receipt of cus- 
toms in the box-office of an up-town theatre. 
For years I have tried to propitiate that satrap 
with modest politeness and feeble little jokes. 
He has never been softened by either, but con- 
tinues to "chuck" the worst places out to me 
(no matter how early I arrive, the best have al- 
ways been given to the speculators), and to frown 
down my attempts at self-assertion. 

When I have seen this enemy at my feet, I 

[ 274 ] 



^ R^CE OF SLAVES 

shall start down town (stopping on the way to 
brain the teller at my bank, who is perennially 
paring his nails, and refuses to see me until that 
operation is performed), to the office of a night- 
boat line, where the clerk has so often forced 
me, with hundreds of other weary vidims, to 
stand in line like convid:s, while he chats with 
a "lady friend,'' his back turned to us and his leg 
comfortably thrown over the arm of his chair. 
Then I will take my blood-stained way — but, 
no ! It is better not to put my victims on their 
guard, but to abide my time in silence ! Courage, 
fellow-slaves, our day will come! 



[ 275 ] 



Ae)6t 



N'' 40 

Introspection* 



THE close of a year must bring even to 
the careless and the least inclined toward 
self-inspedlion, an hour of thoughtful- 
ness, a desire to glance back across the past, and 
set one*smental house in order, before starting out 
on another stage of the journey for that none too 
distant bourne toward which we all are moving. 

Our minds are like solitary dwellers in a vast 
residence, whom habit has accustomed to live in 
a few only of the countless chambers around 
them. We have colleded from other parts of 
our lives mental furniture and bric-a-brac that 
time and association have endeared to us, have 
installed these meagre belongings convenient to 
our hand, and contrived an entrance giving facile 
access to our living-rooms, avoiding the effort 
of a long detour through the echoing corridors 
and disused salons behind. No acquaintances, and 
but few friends, penetrate into the private cham- 
bers of our thoughts. We set aside a common 
room for the reception of visitors, making it as 
cheerful as circumstances will allow and take care 
that the conversation therein rarely turns on any 
subje6t more personal than the view from the 
windows or the prophecies of the barometer. 

In the old-fashioned brick palace at Kensing- 

• December thirty-first, i888. 

[ 276 ] 



INTROSP ECTION 



ton, a little suite of rooms is carefully guarded 
from the public gaze, swept, garnished and tended 
as though the occupants of long ago were hourly 
expedted to return. The early years of England's 
aged sovereign were passed in these simple apart- 
ments and by her orders they have been kept 
unchanged, the furniture and decorations re- 
maining to-day as when she inhabited them. In 
one corner, is assembled a group of dolls, dressed 
in the quaint finery of 1825. A set of miniature 
cooking utensils stands near by. A child's scrap- 
books and color-boxes lie on the tables. In one 
sunny chamber stands the little white-draped bed 
where the heiress to the greatest crown on earth 
dreamed her childish dreams, and from which 
she was hastily aroused one June morning to be 
saluted as Queen. So homelike and livable an 
air pervades the place, that one almost expeds 
to see the lonely little girl of seventy years ago 
playing about the unpretending chambers. 

AfFedion for the past and a reverence for the 
memory of the dead have caused the royal wife 
and mother to preserve with the same care sou- 
venirs of her passage in other royal residences. 
The apartments that sheltered the first happy 
months of her wedded life, the rooms where she 
knew the joys and anxieties of maternity, have 
become for her consecrated sanctuaries, where 
the widowed, broken old lady comes on certain 
anniversaries to evoke the unforgotten past, to 
meditate and to pray. 

[ 277 ] 



Who, as the year is drawing to its close, does 
not open in memory some such sacred portal, 
and sit down in the familiar rooms to live over 
again the old hopes and fears, thrilling anew 
with the joys and temptations of other days? 
Yet, each year these pilgrimages into the past 
must become more and more lonely journeys; 
the friends whom we can take by the hand and 
lead back to our old homes become fewer with 
each decade. It would be a useless sacrilege to 
force some listless acquaintance to accompany 
us. He would not hear the voices that call to 
us, or see the loved faces that people the silent 
passages, and would wonder what attraction we 
could find in the stuffy, old-fashioned quarters. 

Many people have such a dislike for any men- 
tal privacy that they pass their lives in public, 
or surrounded only by sporting trophies and 
games. Some enjoy living in their pantries, com- 
posing for themselves succulent dishes, and inter- 
ested in the doings of the servants, their com- 
panions. Others have turned their salons into 
nurseries, or feel a predilection for the stable and 
the dog-kennels. Such people soon weary of their 
surroundings, and move constantly, destroying, 
when they leave old quarters, all the objeCls 
they had collected. 

The men and women who have thus curtailed 
their belongings are, however, quite contented 
with themselves. No doubts ever harass them 
as to the commodity or appropriateness of their 

[ 278 ] 



INTROSP ECTION 



lodgements and look with pity and contempt on 
friends who remain faithful to old habitations. 
The drawback to a migratory existence, however, 
is the fad: that, as a French saying has put it, 
Ceux qui se refusent les pensees serieuses tomhent 
dans les idees noires. These people are surprised 
to find as the years go by that the futile amuse- 
ments to which they have devoted themselves 
do not fill to their satisfa6tion all the hours of a 
lifetime. Having provided no books nor learned 
to practise any art, the time hangs heavily on 
their hands. They dare not look forward into 
the future, so blank and cheerless does it ap- 
pear. The past is even more distasteful to them. 
So, to fill the void in their hearts, they hurry 
out into the crowd as a refuge from their own 
thoughts. 

Happy those who care to revisit old abodes, 
childhood*s remote wing, and the moonlit porches 
where they knew the rapture of a first-love whis- 
per. Who can enter the chapel where their dead 
lie, and feel no blush of self-reproach, nor burn- 
ing consciousness of broken faith nor wasted op- 
portunities? The new year will bring to them as 
near an approach to perfe6l happiness as can be 
attained in life's journey. The fortunate mortals 
are rare who can, without a heartache or regret, 
pass through their disused and abandoned dwell- 
ings; who dare to open every door and enter 
all the silent rooms; who do not hurry shudder- 
ingly by some obscure corners, and return with 

[ 279 ] 



wo%^LT>LY w^rs tff 'Brw<jrs 



a sigh of relief to the cheerful sunlight and mur- 
murs of the present. ^ , 

Sleepless midnight hours come mevitably to 
each of us, when the creaking gates of subter- 
ranean passages far down in our consciousness 
open of themselves, and ghostly mhabitants 
steal out of awful vaults and force us to look 
again into their faces and touch their unhealed 

wounds. 

An old lady whose cheerfulness under a hun- 
dred griefs and tribulations was a marvel and an 
example, once told a man who had come to her 
for counsel in a moment of bitter trouble, that 
she had derived comfort when difficulties loomed 
bia around her by writing down all her cares and 
worries, making a list of the subjeds that harassed 
her, and had always found that, when reduced to 
material written words, the dimensions of her 
troubles were astonishingly diminished. She rec- 
ommended her procedure to the troubled youth, 
and prophesied that his anxieties would dwindle 
away in the clear atmosphere of pen and paper. 
Introspedion, the deliberate unlatching of 
closed wickets, has the same effed: of stealing 
away the bitterness from thoughts that, if left 
in the gloom of semi-oblivion, will grow until 
they overshadow a whole life. It is better to fol- 
low the example of England's pure Queen, vis- 
iting on certain anniversaries our secret places 
and holding communion with the past, for it is 
by such, scrutiny only 

[ 280 ] 



INTROS P ECTION 



That men may rise on stepping-stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things. 

Those who have courage to perform thor- 
oughly this task will come out from the silent 
chambers purified and chastened, more lenient 
to the faults and shortcomings of others, and 
better fitted to take up cheerfully the burdens 
of a new year. 



FINIS 



[281 ] 



1 



Composition and plates by 2). S. Updike 

The SVl errymount 'Press^ Boston 

^resswork by The University T*ress 

Cambridge 



